The Faustian Peace that followed was later called by Churchill, “Our Darkest Hour” and the Third Reich spread across Europe and striking at all its foes at its leisure. It was later said by one foolish Historian that Hitler only invaded the Soviet Union to impress the British – if this were true, it could not have been more wrong as from April 1941, the biggest arms supplier to the USSR was Great Britain. Some have tried to give Halifax due credit for choosing to preserve British military capacity in the face of annihilation, but these are a notable minority at best. In the public mind, he is still the face of Appeasement, a Fascist apologist who caved at the first sign of blood, and rightly to be brought down after the East Asian onslaught.
This whole list is very solid, but this is my favourite detail--"appeasement that just ends up as a year's delay on the war" is totally against standard fictional logic, but also very clearly plausible once you think about the geopolitical realities.
This whole list is very solid, but this is my favourite detail--"appeasement that just ends up as a year's delay on the war" is totally against standard fictional logic, but also very clearly plausible once you think about the geopolitical realities.
This whole list is very solid, but this is my favourite detail--"appeasement that just ends up as a year's delay on the war" is totally against standard fictional logic, but also very clearly plausible once you think about the geopolitical realities.
Well the thing with Hitler's Germany is that the beasts hunger is insaitable and it's completely erratic, to the point it will act against in own interests in the long run.
Inspired by an @Comisario list I think there’s a potential for a TILAW looking at a successful ‘Gaitskellism’ of sorts and it’s aftermath (subject to further development and research when I have the time);
1955 - 1957: Anthony Eden (Conservative) 1955 (Majority) def. Clement Attlee (Labour) [1], Jo Grimond (Liberal) 1957 - 1960: Richard A. Butler (Conservative Majority) [2] 1960 - 1963: Hugh Gaitskell (Labour) [3] 1960 (Majority) def. Richard A. Butler (Conservative), Jo Grimond (Liberal) 1963 - 1969: Alfred Robens (Labour) [4] 1964 (Majority) def. Peter Thorneycroft (Conservative), Jo Grimond (Liberal) 1969 - : Reginald Maudling (Conservative) [5] 1969 (Majority) def. Alfred Robens (Labour), Mark Bonham Carter (Liberal)
1). In the year’s leading up to the 1955 election, the Labour Party was wracked with infighting. Bevan’s bouts of Spring Fever and Arthur Deakin’s crusade against the so called embodiment of British Socialism would finally come to ahead with Bevan’s expulsion from the Labour Party. Deakin’s victory was not to be long, as he would aprubtly die on the First of May that year. Still the lingering remains of Bevan’s expulsion would set the stage for Gaitskell’s eventual rise to the leadership of the Labour Party, in the wake of Labour’s rather dismal Performance in the 1955 election.
Despite Gaitskell’s resounding victory, with 157 Members of Parliament voting him, Richard Crossman’s 70 vote would indicate that Gaitskell couldn’t just be the puppet of the extreme right of the party. As Attlee said at numerous points ‘a Labour leader has to be a little left of centre’ and Gaitskell would find himself having to adopt a similar approach if he was to ensure some support from the factions who’s leader he had helped scalped, even if he had to grit his teeth.
2). Richard Austen Butler, commonly known as Rab had wanted to be leader in 1955 when Eden had muscled out the decrepit Churchill, but mistrust and linge doubts over Butler’s abilities and once known support of appeasement meant that his leadership ambitions were dead on arrival. Now in the wake of the Suez debacle which had nearly destroyed British standing and had denied Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan a future as potential leader, Butler manoeuvred to ensure that he would succeed Eden. This would occur despite division within the cabinet, with an attempt to push forward Selwyn Lloyd as a potential alternative, but this would turn out to be in vain, as Butler would end up heading to the Palace in due course to kiss the Queen’s hand.
Butler would be handed a difficult task ahead, as the world economy experienced a slump in the wake of Suez, whilst Britian’s international prestige had been weakened, as America had shown it held the cards in the ‘special relationship’. Butler would end up resembling King Cnut in time, trying to tell the tide of inflation to go back, eventually leading to a bout of public sector expenditure cuts in the Winter of 1960, which proved incredibly unpopular.
This combined with Race Riots during the Summer of 1958 and the deaths of soldiers in Cyprus and Malaya seemed to indicate grim reality of Butler’s Britain, as it shuffled off into electoral defeat in the Spring of 1960.
3). Gaitskell had summited the mountain of British Politics and won, he had muscled aside Bevan, Morrison and now Butler, he thrown off the image as ‘calculating machine’ with his passionate denunciations of Suez and the defeat of the Unilateralists within the Labour Party, he had a Majority of over Forty, and a manifesto that promised international and economic renewal, as the ideal of economic prosperity under the auspices of Economic Planning instead of the chaos of Conservativism seemed to provide a way forward.
Whilst the dark cloud of Anuerian Bevan’s death that Summer would be felt by many in the Labour Party, Gaitskell would in the Autumn continue to govern with zeal. Whilst the economy was initially wobbly at the start of Gaitskell’s tenure, by the end of 1961, confidence had been restored and signs of growth, even if somewhat sluggish, managed to emerge. Economic Planning lead by the Department of Economic Affairs, under the guidance of Harold Wilson (given as a sop when Gaitskell placed Douglas Jay into the Chancellorship) in lockstep with the National Economic Development Council (often referred to as Neddy) provided a vision of new growth based Socialism. Alongside this push for a ‘modernisation of the British Economy’ there was a push for increased house building and development of Motorways that connected the British Isles in the modern car focused way.
In Foreign Affairs, Gaitskell would work with President Humphrey in providing an Anti-Communist buffer against Nikita Khrushchev, though eventually by 1962, agreements towards a form of detente between the West and the Soviet’s would emerge culminating in the 1963 Nuclear Testing Ban Treaty, something that seemed to prove Gaitskell’s Multilateralist stance somewhat correct to the general public.
But not everything was going smoothly in Gaitskell’s Britain, the Trade Unions who had been key instigators in Gaitskell’s succession from Attlee but the Bosses who had help oversee Gaitskell’s rise were now either dead or had retired leading to a new breed of Trade Union leaders who at times hewed to the Left of the Gaitskell Government. Tensions between the two would permeate throughout Gaitskell’s early months as the possibility of continued spending cuts loomed large. Alongside this, discussions over how Trade Unions would fit within a new planned economy were brushed aside for the time being.
Meanwhile the Labour Party was divided on the European Economic Community with Gaitskell’s reticence over the issue frustrating some of his main supporters. And despite Gaitskell’s bohmiean attitudes and his own personal proclivities, the occasional attempts to liberalise policing, race relations, laws around homosexuality and abortion would be false starts, waiting till the end of the decade to awkwardly occur. Gaitskell’s tenure in hindsight was an awkward attempt to ease Britian into a gradual transition away from the period of Emprie. It’s success is debatable.
In the end though after just over two and a half years of Gaitskell, it seemed that Britain might be coming out of the Post Suez Malaise, even if the actual result split Britons. But Gaitskell wouldn’t live to see what he had helped create. After an series of diffirent illnesses and over exhaustion, in the early March of 1963, Hugh Gaitskell would be found dead.
4). Alfred Robens was in many respects an uncontroversial candidate for the leadership in the wake of Gaitskell’s death. The Deputy Leader and Home Secretary had been seen as the heir apparent for a while. Robens genial nature and ability to get along with all the different factions of the party made him popular in comparison to the confrontational Gaitskell.
Robens would win the 1963 leadership election easily over George Brown and Barbara Castle surprisingly popular run (and ensure her entry into Cabinet not long afterwards). Robens was for the most part to continue the Gaitskellite style of Socialism, though with at times an increased emphasis on Nationalisation of industry and further economic development as well as a relationship with the Trade Unions which initially was posistive.
On a message of competence over anything else, Robens would easily win the 1964 election, over the awkward Peter Thorneycroft who ran a lacklustre campaign. Robens boundless enthusiasm initially attracted voters to him, the image of the beaming moustached Prime Minister seemed to offer a positive glimpse of the future.
By 1969, this had mainly drifted away, messy quagmires in Borneo and Aden lingered in the minds of many, the institution of wage freezes in the wake of an overheating economy had angered the Unions who felt betrayed by Labour and the at times flippant attitude of Robens towards times of hardship rubbed many people up the wrong way. Whilst Robens has some successes, with the successful joining of the EEC alongside Ireland in 1967 being the main one, it was fair to say that by the end of the Sixties, Robens was seen as a Conservative dinosaur instead of the Modern Man that he had initially presented himself as.
For a man who took much from being liked, this had a profound impact on him, as Robens in 1969 was a gloomy campaigner, as troubles emerged in Northern Ireland and another dismal economic outlook seemed to looming on the horizon it seemed inevitable that Robens was to lose.
5). In 1969, Reginald Maudling had beaten Robens and seemingly banished the scourge of Socialism from Britain according to his supporters, but this was only half true. State Planning was, for the meantime, to stay around, but to be made more efficient. Indeed Maudling was happy to work the new men that seemed to offer a New Posistive Vision for Britain and promised to make Britian Efficent and Prosperous once again.
But to say that figures like Jim Slater and James Goldsmith had very different ideas of what a Prosperous Britain looked like compared to the Government was to be, an understatement.
A center-left leader who tried to dial down foreign intervention dies in 1963, is replaced by his more conservative-seeming deputy, and then that deputy loses the next election to a right-winger sitting on a timebomb of scandal, you say?
A center-left leader who tried to dial down foreign intervention dies in 1963, is replaced by his more conservative-seeming deputy, and then that deputy loses the next election to a right-winger sitting on a timebomb of scandal, you say?
I didn’t clock that as I was writing, but…errr, yeah.
I do think there are of course differences (like in 1963, Robens would be seen as being on Gaitskell’s left to a point before shifting rightward) but I can see what you mean.
I didn’t clock that as I was writing, but…errr, yeah.
I do think there are of course differences (like in 1963, Robens would be seen as being on Gaitskell’s left to a point before shifting rightward) but I can see what you mean.
It would be like if LBJ led the biggest expansion of the welfare state since FDR but all anyone remembers is him getting bogged down in Cold War Shit... Hmm.
1933-1941:Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democratic) 1932 (with John Nance Garner) def. Herbert Hoover (Republican)
1936 (with John Nance Garner) def. Alf Landon (Republican)
1941-1945: Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democratic - 'Second National Union') 1940 (with Fiorello H. La Guardia) def.Gerald P. Nye (America First)
1945-1947: Fiorello H. La Guardia (Republican - 'Second National Union') 1944 (with Henry A. Wallace) def. James F. Byrnes ('Independent' Democratic), John W. Bricker ('Independent' Republican)
1947-1949: Henry A. Wallace (Democratic - 'Second National Union')
1949-1953: George Marshall (Independent - 'Third National Union') 1948 (with Benjamin Laney) def. Henry A. Wallace (Independent)
1953-1957: Joe McCarthy (National Union) 1952 (with Richard Russell Jr.) def. Vito Marcantonio (United Front)
The really really obvious Nazi attack on California in the late 30s rather rallies interventionist attitudes in America, and what ends up happening is that America leaps into the action along with Britain and France in 1939. Yankee doughboys manage to slow the German advance but America is no better prepared for Blitzkrieg than the British and French and eventually have to pull out. Fears over the 1940 election lead to Roosevelt forming his fateful 'Second National Union'. Howard Hughes becomes a national hero, wunderwaffen pouring from his factories to aid the American war effort. The combination of that America properly getting its house in order, and Hitler's attempted invasion of the Soviet Union leads to the fall of Germany in 1943. FDR retires in 1944 and with proper care and attention and time to rest and relax, dies in his 70s.
FDR is followed by FLG, and realising that his own base in the Republican party is rather narrow, retains the National Union brand. 'Independent' Democrats win the South and 'Independent' Republicans win the Northeast but America is happy under La Guardia. Sadly he dies in 1947 and is succeeded by the optimistic but extremely eccentric Wallace. Wallace is ultimately stripped of his status as Democratic leader and the 'Independents' of yesteryear coalesce behind an extremely neutral figure, the former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe.
Marshall is unhappy in his role as figurehead and a figurehead he is as the coalition of segregationist southerners and conservative northerners begins to come together. For this reason he stands aside in 1952. Joe McCarthy rides a wave of demagoguery and scaremongering, pointing to communist advances in East Asia, and then pointing out the 'Second National Union' coalition which had similarly come together under ex-Republican and FLG protegee Vito Marcantonio, and saying the two were linked.
Meanwhile, Howard Hughes' business empire continues to grow, the money he has invested in the 'Third National Union' finally coming home to roost. New Dealer restrictions on business, which had been maintained by Marshall, will be cut, the Reds under the bed will be hunted out and brought to book, the Soviet Union will be opposed to the hilt, and civil rights will be stifled like the crypto-Bolshevism it so obviously is...
1933-1941: Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democratic) 1932 (w. John Nance Garner) def. Herbert Hoover (Republican)
1936 (w. John Nance Garner) def. Alf Landon (Republican)
The rather obvious Nazi attack on Hollywood gets played off by Berlin as the actions of extremists - Hitler takes advantage of the situation to purge some ambitious ideologues (Himmler is amongst them) and remove a couple of difficult generals. Nevertheless, the isolationist attitude in the US is completely disintegrated, when war finally breaks out in 1939, the United States joins in from the off. A short and victorious war in Europe is promised as the American Expeditionary Force crosses the ocean. Only to get cut off at Dunkirk, and joining the Brits losing the flower of their nation's soldiery and materiel to the shock and awe of blitzkrieg.
Roosevelt is a busted flush in 1940 as the Nazis swarm across Europe, and Lord Halifax tried to broker a peace with Berlin via Italian intermediaries. He's the man who led the country into war - but importantly it was less that, and more the fact that America appeared to be losing which put paid to any plausible re-election bid. An attempted renewed isolationism was put paid at the Republican Convention with Taft losing out to upstart former Democrat Wendell Willkie. Garner was the agreed Democratic candidate, an attempt to draw a line under Roosevelt's military policy whilst offering continuity with the rest of his Administration.
1941-1944: Wendell Willkie (Republican) 1940 (w. Charles L. McNary) def. John Nance Garner (Democratic), Burton K. Wheeler (Independent)
Willkie presided over the rest of America's war - and for a time, it really did look like America's war. Lord Halifax was attempting to negotiate a peace with Berlin after all. But in the first sign of the United States' new leading role, Willkie leaned on Britain's dominions - Canada would not have peace with Germany at any price, not while their biggest trading partner told them not to.
Embargoes were lifted on Japan - a Devil's Bargain of a kind, to prevent a coterminous war in the Pacific - and an agreement that saw Japanese troops entering the Dutch East Indies to 'protect' them from theoretical German aggression. In time, Willkie come to regret this, becoming a firm anti-colonialist. Churchill's government collapsed in 1942 due to pressure from Willkie - by the end of the war, J.B. Priestley was presiding over the liquidation of the British Empire.
Nevertheless, death comes for all. And for the Willkie Administration it came doubly fast - and soon a familiar face took centre stage.
1944-1945: Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democratic)
Appointed Secretary of State by Willkie in order to forge a wartime unity administration, Roosevelt would salvage his reputation in the closing salvos of the war - he presided over the peace treaties that forged a new Europe, that paved the road toward a World Without Empires, and on the domestic front drew a new line for the New Deal - in the form of the Second Bill of Rights, which was sold a finalisation of Willkie's legacy.
Roosevelt chose not to seek a new term of his own in 1944 - preferring instead to take up the position of first Secretary-General of the United Nations.
1945-1947: Leo Crowley (Democratic) 1944 (w. James F. Byrnes) def. Douglas MacArthur (Republican)
In the warm afterglow of Victory, Crowley stormed to victory on a very Willkie-Roosevelt platform - that of a new World of Peace. And he had the means to do it. Neither Willkie or Roosevelt had taken the time to abolish his Foreign Economic Administration while in office. With the compliant Priestley at his side, Crowley looked to the abolition of economic and military borders - at least within Western Europe. His New Atlantic Charter would see America take its place as the economic centre of gravity for Reconstruction - not through anything so vulgar as the suggested Marshall Plan, but through the actual direct intervention of the American government in the daily lives of Europeans. Murals such as those seen in the First FDR Administration sprang up everywhere from Inverness to the Rhineland.
But Crowley was ultimately done in by petty corruption earlier in his career and deepening criticism of the actions of the 'Neo-New Dealers' from the left as well as the right. Pursued by investigative journalists, Crowley jumped before he could be pushed.
1947-1949: James F. Byrnes (Democratic)
Byrnes was a more old-fashioned Democrat - and uncomfortable with the racial liberation talk unleashed by his recent Republican predecessor. The vast expense that the United States was taking on for itself in reconstructing Europe also disquieted him. Byrnes quietly rolled back much of his predecessor's commitments and took a much more conservative line, both at home and abroad - in particular Byrnes looked to support the Japanese in their war to contain the United Front in China.
1949-1953: Tom Dewey (Republican) 1948 (w. John W. Bricker) def. James F. Byrnes (Democratic), Henry A. Wallace (Progressive)
Dewey finally had his moment - but even now was overshadowed by Willkie. Up against Byrnes, Dewey felt forced to defend Willkie's internationalist legacy, even as under pressure from his own party's right he committed to supporting the colonial empires of France and Japan in containing socialism.
Dewey would preside over the final 'scuttling' of the British Empire, welcoming the Commonwealth of India to the community of nations, and being forced to intervene in the Commonwealth of Israel - a military commitment that came to define his time in office.
The war in Israel was to curtail a bloody civil war that began as British forces left - the reduced but still substantial American commitments in Western Europe combined with this intervention saw a worrying surge in anti-semitism on the American right. As Dewey found his hands tied by both his personal morals and the gymnastics of the shifting party ground, as looked forward to re-election in 1952, he saw only one solution that kept him near the rungs of powers whilst simultaneously pushing forward the cause of moral decency.
1953-1957: Dwight D. Eisenhower (Independent - Republican- Progressive) 1952 (w. Tom Dewey) def. Estes Kefauver (Democratic)
The surprising Progressive endorsement of Eisenhower probably came because of his apolitical positioning on most issues besides Willkian internationalism. Eisenhower was enthusiastic about European Reconstruction, and over the course of his term saw the Republican Party partially reshape itself around the concept of a United Atlantic.
However he also presided over renewed hostilities in China - and committed to the final victory over the Japanese backed 'Reorganised National Government' over the Communists. This was the only way of keeping the Republican right on side. In fact, Eisenhower hoped to have his cake and eat it too, with efforts to cleave away Southern Democrats with his opposition to school integration. Eisenhower's quixotic platform, and his narrow avenue of appeal given this, led to his decision not to stand again - a good thing to as the 1956 presidential campaign finally revealed the deep contradictions in the main two parties platforms.
1957-1961: Tom Dewey (Republican) 1956 (w. Clinton Anderson) def. Strom Thurmond (State's Rights), W. Averell Harriman (Democratic), John W. Bricker (Republican), Ava Gardner (Progressive)
Only the second President to win a second non-consecutive turn, it did not occur without controversy. Dewey's renomination saw a rebellion at the Republican Convention who decried 'King Thomas', which was mirrored in the Democrats who narrowly nominated their own New Yorker only to see a brutal split from the Southern conservatives. The Progressives, disappointed at Eisenhower's tenure, ran a celebrity candidate. A hung electoral college was the result - and America was only saved from a contingent election which given congressional arithmetic many uchronists believe may have resulted in a Thurmond victory, thanks to Harriman instructing his electors to vote for Dewey. In return for Dewey instructing his to vote for Anderson.
Dewey's term would see the final passage of the Civil Rights Bill - and an Amendment to the Constitution to back it up. The passage of that Amendment saw a number of states resurrecting calls for an Article V Convention - specifically on moves to complete Willkie's work towards a World Union.
Dewey was resistant to this - perceiving the growing threat of the nationalist right, and their ambitious corporate backer based out of Nevada, the quixotic industrial war hero Howard Hughes. Nevertheless, the passing of Stalin from leadership of the Soviet Union saw some ructions in the Eastern Bloc, which were swiftly clamped down upon. The economic clients of America in Western Europe called for a more formal military structure to defend against any Soviet threat.
The New Atlantic Charter would be replaced in 1959 with the Trans-Atlantic Community, which brought together the various economic organisations under one roof, with oversight from representatives from all nations of the Community. And crucially it formalised a military alliance and power structure in opposition to The East.
Dewey looked to stand aside as the 1960 election approached, the twenty year anniversary of the fateful wartime election that brought Willkie to power.
1961-1969: Hubert H. Humphrey (Democratic - Republican - Progressive) 1960 (w. Nelson Rockefeller) def. Joe P. Kennedy Jr. (American Rights)
1964 (w. Wayne Morse & Walter Judd) def. Barry Goldwater (Sons of Liberty)
Willkieism finally had its apotheosis as the parties broadly aligned around the Roosevelt-Willkie-Dewey consensus aligned against the singularly dangerous figure of the Hughes backed Kennedy. The 1960 election was shockingly narrow - it was only thanks to brow beating of electors that a faithless choice didn't swing it to Kennedy or put the whole thing to a contingent election. In the circumstances, you might expect Humphrey to have been cautious.
He was far from it - he took the flagship policies of his predecessor, civil rights and the TAC and decided they didn't go far enough. A new Civil Rights Bill, to give the Amendment teeth, passed through Congress and soon entire school districts in the South were facing down the barrel of a gun. Integrate, or perish. Joining the institutions of the TAC was the Oceanic Assembly, to grant more democratic oversight to the now sprawling institutions of the TAC.
The 1962 midterms promised an American Rights victory in 1964. Humphrey girded his loins for the inevitable, as Rockefeller quietly informed him he didn't plan to join his ticket again. And then, in 1963, there was the Dawn Coup. Japanese junior officers seized control of the military dictatorship, and announced their plans to divest their increasingly impoverished country of an expensive and bloodily-retained empire. And crucially, they called on the United States and the Trans-Atlantic Community to help them do it.
The intervention was colossal, the biggest since WW2. But the great institutions of the TAC, forged in war and refined in peacetime were more than prepared. Opposition to Humphrey suddenly dissolved as vast new territories opened up for democracy.
The 1964 election was a wash - Humphrey was now the most popular President since Lincoln, the American Rights Party a den of cranks and misfits. Their sole offering was Goldwater, who disavowed the American Rights label in favour of a more old-fashioned moniker to indicate his personal preference for individual liberty rather than the grim mixture of nationalism that had brewed over decades. Humphrey meanwhile nominated Co-Vice Presidents from his partner parties - Morse and Judd represented wildly differing wings but represented the breadth of support for Humphrey.
The French Union was dissolved into the Trans-Atlantic Community in 1966 - it was at this point that the states accumulated to force an Article V Convention actually existed. In 1967, the many states voted to endorse the formation of a World Union, through the institutions of the Trans-Atlantic Community. The 1968 presidential election promised to be the last...
what happened to Kander did his PTSD finally caught up to him or was he bumped off in more nefarious means as a matter of fact what happened to Buckley, Sanders, and Kennedy
what happened to Kander did his PTSD finally caught up to him or was he bumped off in more nefarious means as a matter of fact what happened to Buckley, Sanders, and Kennedy
Buckley- Shot by an anarchist (although like the OTL Kennedy Assassination, plenty of "i do my own research" types have their own ideas) Kennedy- Addisons caught up with him (he didn't die, but he collapsed during a speech) Sanders- Shot by a Christian Nationalist Kander- PTSD caught up to him (Kander and the NFF-led government would begin a "Purge" to get rid of Christian Nationalist elements, with the indirect help of NFF-affiliated militias (like the John Brown Society, LGBT gun owners groups, etc). The war brings back some bad memories.
The New Founding Fathers are an extremely civic libertarian and libertarian socialist political party. Kinda like a left wing version of the movie NFF.
The Purge is a right-wing horror movie released in 2013 protesting the leftist NFF government of the United States. For the Day of National Action Against Religious Extremists in 2010 and 2018 click here and here.
This was my entry for last month's HoS List Challenge. This month's contest is themed around The Eastern Bloc, the link is in my sig, and there's still a couple of weeks to get your entry in!
Fear Naught
1924-1926: Stanley Baldwin (Conservative)
1926-1926: A. J. Cook (MFGB leading General Strike Committee)
1926-1928: Admiral John Jellicoe (Emergency Administration)
1928-1934: Oliver Locker-Lampson (Imperial Sentinels) def 1928: (Coalition with Conservatives) Neville Chamberlain (Constitutionalist), William Joynson-Hicks (Conservative), Havelock Wilson (British Worker's League) 1930: Second Instrument of Government passed; Parliament officially dissolved
1934-1941: Arthur Wellesley (Imperial Sentinels) defeated in power struggle 1934: Oliver Locker-Lampson ("Hands Off Britain" Imperial Sentinels)
1941-1948: William Joyce (Imperial Sentinels) 1942: Monarchy abolished; official foundation of British Imperial State 1948-1948: Oliver Locker-Lampson (Free Britain)
1948-1948: de jure Arnold Leese (Imperial Sentinels), de facto collapsed authority
1948-0000: Gen. Harry Crerar, Gen. William H. Simpson, & Gen. Iona Yakir (Allied Powers Administration)
The radio microphone crackled to life in the old man's hands. It worked, of course. The scarred bastard wanted all the recievers in perfect condition, and all the aerials fixed up properly, because even as Red bombs fell and Yank troops landed and children wasted away in the streets for want of bread, everyone in the land had to hear Their Master's Voice every evening on the dot, even if very few people still tuned in, now that you could get a cheap American wireless smuggled all the way from Dundee.
"People of Britain..." His raspy voice blared out, first falteringly, then proudly. "People of Britain--good people of Britain--I am speaking to you, tonight..." Some great blast--artillery?--roared in the background, and he had to pause, scrabbling with one hand for his note-cards as they fell off the shaking table.
"Good people of Britain, this is the voice of liberty speaking."
"My name--you may remember it--my name is Oliver Locker-Lampson. I was--I still am, by law--the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, a state which has been destroyed by a band of decievers who claimed they only wished to protect it. I am speaking to those citizens that are still loyal to Britain, to what it stands for and should always stand for."
Some banked fire rose to life in the old man's eyes as he spoke. His voice, and his grip on the microphone, became firmer.
"You have been decieved, every last one of you! Decived by an army of liars and cheats, who should never have been let into the government into the first place! The primary goal, indeed, the only goal, of the Sentinels was to clear out the Red menace, an alien element in Britain, that sought to undermine British strength at home and abroad through economic parasitism and sowing division. It was never to scatter spies into every corner of a man's life, to ghettoise the most civilised of our citizens out of incomprehensible fear, or to wage war on half the world! Now, the Communist threat is stronger than ever, with Trotsky's forces in Calais salivating at the chance to ravage our women and plunder our cities!"
"All of this could have been prevented. It was a choice, an incorrect one, to align ourselves with the Axial powers of Germany and Italy. In Britain, we had our own way of doing things--we were fighting with the same danger, but not in the same deadly form. Our antidotes to the Communist peril were not the deadly scourges used on the Continent, that slowly wither away the user by their excesses, but subtler tonics that invigorated what did not need to be cut away. The wholesale importation of these systems--just as alien to the British race as Communism--by opportunistic, foreign-controlled mountebanks, was never inevitable!"
A few short, sharp bursts of gunfire echoed through the corridors of the broadcasting station. The old man, however, had thoroughly regained his momentum by this point, and could hardly make them out over his own words.
"Look at where they have led us! Our King, forced to abdicate for offending the sensibilities of the second Cromwell who now sits in Whitehall! Our church, disestablished and forced out of public life for the crime of upstaging the holy State! Our people, starving, cold, haunted, orphaned, blasted by bombs, not only abandoned, told to die by a government with a head and heart of stone. What began as national reawakening has been peverted into national suicide. We may have been battered down, but we're still Englishmen, and I trust that we will not go quietly into the night that is being prepared for us--I for one, am not."
"As I speak, thousands of secret patriots are rising up, ready to take control of key positions and seize power. They have already struck a vital blow to the very heart of the beast itself. Join them! It was not the Master who won the great battles of the last decade, from crushing the agents of Moscow to winning the Greater Ulster campaign. It was you, the ordinary citizen of Britain! I leave it in your hands to decide--do you want to live under the bloody banner of the swastika, or under the Union Jack?"
By now, the outside world had faded from view for the old man. The peeling plaster opposite, the rusting mic grating against his hand, the hammering and yelling from outside the door--all of these were out of sight.
"We are--we remain--a nation that is strong! A nation that can carve out the rot within it!"
He was back there, at the Albert Hall. Blue banners, snapping in the breeze, waving over hundreds of cheering faces...
"Do we need some ex-American, dancing to the tune of a mad piper in Berlin, to rule over us? Will we Britons ever be slaves?"
The blueshirted legions, marching on below the stage, hailing him, ready to wipe out the Red threat, to crush Cook, to dispense with that fool Chamberlain, to make a Britain the heroes of the War could be proud of, a leader that understood the fighting Tommy, enabled to do away with the old men with their old lies and old slowness...
"Together, we can break the chains holding us to Hitler, and work with the Americans to fight the real enemy of civilisation. All I am asking is for you to follow me again!"
Behind the stage, captains of industry, leaders of politics, great men, all backing what was right, all willing to help that inner cadre of experienced men, himself, and so many others, standing besides him on that day, that glorious day, Blakeney and Churchill and Agent Knight and Admiral Hall and Baron Queenborough and...
"All you need is to--"
...and the Duke of Wellington. And Joyce, behind him, always behind him.
The microphone slipped from his hands.
There had been photos. He wasn't meant to see them. He suspected no-one was. Webster, that bizarre woman, had bribed a guard to take them, and sent them around to her friends, secretly, as trophies. Look what we have done! This is it, our crowning glory!
It was in Donegal, perhaps, that camp. It could have been Scotland, with the mountains behind it, but it was probably Donegal, because the grass around it, in the photos, looked too lush. He remembered that--how wrong it seemed to have the fullness of nature outside the barbed wire, and inside it, watched over by grim-faced riflemen, these skeletal two-third-dead figures, each one with badges proclaiming them COMMUNIST, SABOTEUR, ALIEN...
There was a chimney, behind them, in one of the photos. The American wirelesses had said quite a few things about what the camps in Scotland used their chimneys for. The old man couldn't say if it was the same kind of chimney. It seemed very likely, though. He couldn't be sure--he'd burned the photos already, out of--something--and the chimney wasn't quite the bit that had stuck with him.
What he remembered was the photo of the guard hut, sparsely appointed, with two portraits on the wall. Well, one portrait. It was a composite of two scenes. Joyce, and his own hand on Joyce's shoulder, gazing proudly down like a father at his son, at what they had both achieved.
The sounds of the corridor had gone from too loud to too quiet. The bangs were single, and regular, and accompanied by muffled noises.
Eventually, the old man found the microphone under the desk.
"People of Britain--Good people of Britain--if anyone, who is listening, deserves to be called that--"
"Good people of Britain--forget me. I never deserved your trust, and should never have recieved it. All of this is because of me, and the choices I made. Nothing of what comes next should involve me."
The old man's hand gripped white around the microphone. Footsteps approached, just at the edge of his hearing.
"The Lord permitted the salvation of Sodom if ten righteous men could be found, and I sincerely hope that they exist among you, and act now, to prove it. For them, at least, it is not too late."
2010-2019: David Cameron (Conservative) 2010 (Coalition withLiberal Democrats) def. Gordon Brown (Labour), Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat)
2011 AV referendum: 68% NO-32% YES
2014 Scottish independence referendum: 55% NO-45% YES
2015 (Alliancewith Liberal Democrats) def. Ed Miliband (Labour), Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish National), Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat), Nigel Farage (UKIP)
2019-2023: George Osborne (Conservative) 2021 (Alliancewith Liberal Democrats) def. Ed Balls (Labour), Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish National), Nigel Farage (UKIP), Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat), Tim Farron (Liberal)
2023-2024: Nick Boles (Conservative)
2024-2030: Greg Hands (Liberal Conservative) 2025 (Minority) def. Nigel Farage (UKIP), Chuka Umunna (Labour), Richard Grayson/Sian Berry(Liberal-Green'Progressive Alliance'), Kate Forbes (Scottish Democrat), Alasdair Allan (Scottish National), Mhairi Black (Scottish Red-Green)
2030-2041: Nigel Farage (Independence) 2030 (Majority) def. Greg Hands (Liberal Conservative), Richard Grayson/Sian Berry(Liberal-Green'Progressive Alliance'), Alison McGovern (Labour), Mark Meechan (Scottish Democrat), Mhairi Black (Scottish Red-Green), Alasdair Allan (Scottish National)
2031 EU referendum: 53% LEAVE-47% REMAIN 2033 Scottish independence referendum: 64% YES-36% NO
2034 (Majority) def. Clive Lewis (Progressive), Alicia Kearns (Liberal Conservative), Alison McGovern (Labour)
2038 (Majority) def. Darren Grimes (Progressive), Alicia Kearns (Liberal Conservative), Andrew Hedges (Labour)
2041-2043: Max Stenner (Independence)
2043-2047: Darren Grimes (Progressive) 2043 (Coalition with Labour) def. Max Stenner (Independence), Ben Ramanauskas (Liberal Conservative), Andrew Hedges (Labour)
2044 STV referendum: 59% YES-41% NO
2044 Scottish independence referendum: 70% YES-30% NO 2044 Northern Ireland border poll: 54% UNITE-46% REMAIN 2045 monarchy referendum: 55% YES-45% NO
The proposed electoral pact between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats goes ahead in 2015. There is considerable dissent on both sides, with both Conservative MPs and voters defecting to UKIP and several Lib Dem MPs choosing to stand as anti-Coalition independents, but the alliance wins a majority Cameron would of course have been unable to achieve on his own. Plans for a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union are of course shelved as part of the negotiations between the parties ahead of the election.
Ed Balls, having narrowly succeeded in retaining Morley and Outwood, wins the ensuing leadership contest by an equally narrow margin over Andy Burnham, the party's left being unable to even get a candidate on the ballot. Cameroon austerity sails smoothly on, and he stands down in 2019 to be replaced by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. When Covid hits the 2020 general election is postponed by a year; Balls heads a surprisingly left-wing campaign, taking George Osborne's record and its consequences head-on. When the pandemic's electoral boost and unfavourable boundary changes mean only that Osborne is forced to go begging to the DUP, Chuka Umunna is elected to the leadership on a platform of a sensible fusion of New Labour and Blue Labour: to win over the centre and shore up Labour's traditional, Northern working-class base at risk of defecting to UKIP (the reality of this threat be damned).
Over the next four years the party implodes. George Osborne, meanwhile, is unceremoniously thrown out in the middle of 2023 for some reason. Nick Boles subsequently organises the merger of the alliance into a single party, and the charming metropolitan liberal Greg Hands is elected to the new Liberal Conservative Party's leadership. The surviving anti-Coalition Liberal Democrats, having joined and taken over the continuity Liberals, form an alliance with the Green Party. This 'progressive alliance' wins almost as many votes as the Labour Party, almost reduced to the coalfields and deprived inner cities (its own leader losing his seat to them), does. Worse yet, UKIP takes over 25% of the vote and the title of Official Opposition. The Liberal Conservatives continue in office, largely for the lack of an alternative government that could be formed (despite Umunna's outgoing suggestions that Labour could provide support to a UKIP government), but the following five years are tough: the minority government has barely 200 seats to it.
SNP infighting culminates in a bloody split between conservatives who aren't keen on transgender people (with a Nazi dog faction), a party headed by a conservative who isn't keen on transgender people, and a party that's alright with transgender people. The Nazi dog faction soon takes over the first, the conservatives who aren't keen on transgender people coming to a reluctant agreement with the conservative who isn't keen on transgender people, but for all the predictions of resulting doom for the Scottish Democrats, right-wing, pro-independence populism proves surprisingly popular.
High Speed 2 is opened in full the week before China invades Taiwan. The Hands government, to American fury, maintains a balancing act between Washington and Beijing (suggestions that New York be renamed, unlike the anime boycott, ultimately come to nothing). Two American aircraft carriers at the bottom of the ocean later and Josh Hawley is swept to the presidency in a #populist landslide, the second Republican to win the popular vote in forty years. Nigel Farage's own victory is not nearly as dramatic, but he manages to win a majority nevertheless and form the first truly right-wing government in over thirty years. Britain votes to leave the European Union the next year.
An independence referendum, about the only thing the three Scottish nationalist parties can agree on, is held despite the British government's opposition. The Farage government responds to an attempted unilateral declaration of independence by dissolving Holyrood, banning any party that seeks the breakup of the United Kingdom, and sending the army in. Scotland and Northern Ireland erupt in violence; by the end of the year the situation is best described as one of outright rebellion. Clive Lewis, leading the merged Progressives, takes second place from the Liberal Conservatives. Alison McGovern, who was kept on despite the disastrous 2030 result, leads Labour to an even more dismal result and is couped by that faction of the party that would see it outflank the Progressives to the left.
Even as weekly terrorist attacks return to Britain, or perhaps in part because of it, Farage wins another majority. But it is a narrow victory indeed. He stands down in 2041, Britain's longest-serving prime minister since Thatcher, and after an unrestrained bloodbath of would-be successors is replaced by Max Stenner of the party's 'national-populist' faction. Facing dire polls and post-Farage infighting the inevitable election is held off until the last minute to no avail: the Independence Party loses over half its seats. Welsh devolution is unilaterally restored, while negotiations with the Scottish nationalist forces led by Marcas Miadhachàin (formerly Mark Meechan) lead to an independence referendum being agreed for the following year. Outright crypto-fascism might be in power north of Berwick, but for the rest of Britain—now that PR has finally been achieved—things can only get better.
1942-1945: Winston Churchill (Constitutionalist) [5] (Popular Front, w/ some Conservative, Labour, Liberal, and Constitutionalist) def. Lord Halifax (Conservative); Anthony Eden (Constitutionalist); Archibald Sinclair (Liberal); Harry Pollitt (CPGB); Sir Richard Acland (CommonWealth)
1945-1952: Oswald Mosely (Labour) [6] 1945 (Majority) def. David Margesson (Conservative); Winston Churchill (Constitutionalist); Archibald Sinclair (Liberal); Harry Pollitt (CPGB); Sir Richard Acland (CommonWealth)
1950 (Majority) def. Anthony Eden (National); William Beveridge (Liberal)
1952-1955: Herbert Morrison (Labour) [7]
1955-1963: R.A. Butler (National) [8] 1955 (Majority) def. Herbert Morrison (Labour); Gwilym Lloyd George (Liberal)
1959 (Majority) def. Hugh Gaitskell (Labour); Gwilym Lloyd George (Liberal)
1963-: Quintin Hogg, Lord Hailsham (National) [9]
[5] “Cometh the hour, cometh the man” might well be the epitaph for Winston Churchill, later to be made Duke of London and later still to be voted the “Greatest Briton”. In 1938, it is perhaps amazing to think that he had been thought of as finished in political terms, having quietly resigned his Cabinet post after the Munich Agreement. Yet after the outbreak of war, he agreed to return to his former position at the Admiralty, only to be the architect of the Norway controversy. He was briefly at the centre of a ploy to oust Halifax in the Dunkirk Crisis and again walk out and resigned after the Armistice agreement. Here on Churchill became the internal opposition for the government, questioning every move that it made and arguing for an immediate resumption of hostilities with Germany. Despite this, even he could not predict that Japan would be the one to bring down Halifax, when they bombed Pearl Harbour and began a war against every colony in East Asia not their own.
When Hong Kong fell in ignominy without a shot fired, the British Empire went into shock and time was called for Lord Halifax. While Britain and Japan contested over Malaya, a long overdue vote went up in the House of Commons that overturned the Halifax government and put Churchill in his place – much to his own shock – who had been prepared to concede the Premiership at first, only to then latch on it like a barnacle. Duly appointed by the King, Churchill then made a speech the nation about the attack and committing it to a revanchist stance against Fascism in Europe, before crossing the Atlantic, where President Roosevelt was happy to take up the gauntlet of war against Fascism to affect its annihilation. The Battle of Singapore was the first chance for the Empire to strike back, and in the jungles of Malaya, in the Straights and skies above as the man himself said “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few” as the invaders were driven away.
The British resurgence prompted the German wrath, already overreaching in their war against Stalin’s Russia, and soon War was resumed between Britain and Germany. Much is made of the Battle of Stalingrad as turning point for the War, but it might not have been won, had the Luftwaffe and Rommel’s Panzer Korps not been forced into battle against the British over the Channel and in Africa, respectively. While Goering was hoping to batter the British back into the submission from the air, Churchill let his dogs loose in Africa – not distinguishing one Fascist power from another, they made mincemeat of the Italians in Egypt and Abyssinia, to such an extent that Generaloberst Rommel was bussed in to try and delay the British from an invasion of Hitler’s Southern flank. He needn’t have bothered, for while “the Fox of the Ardennes” was digging trenches in Sicily by 1943, the Anglo-American Might smashed into occupied France, and much of Germany’s “co-belligerent” French Army lined the way to Paris before falling in behind the Allies. Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany had been masters of the world for 12 months since 1940, but they had built their houses on sand, quick to fall under pressure. By 1944, the Die-hards of 1940 had been vindicated, as the Fascist house of cards collapsed – yet in Churchill they had a man behind the times, and with the Conservative Party itself a casualty of the war.
• Prime Minister – Winston Churchill (1942-45)
• Deputy Prime Minister – Oswald Mosely (1942-45)
• Minister of Defence – Winston Churchill (1942-45)
• Lord Privy Seal – Archibald Sinclair (1942-45)
• Foreign Secretary – Anthony Eden (1942-45)
• Chancellor of the Exchequer – Thomas Inskip (1942-44); Clement Attlee (1944-45)
• Home Secretary – Oswald Mosely (1942-45)
• Secretary for War – Herbert Morrison (1942-45)
• Secretary for Air – Oliver Lyttleton (1942-45)
• First Lord of the Admiralty – Harcourt Johnstone (1942-44); A.V. Alexander (1944-45)
• Leader of the House of Commons – Clement Attlee (1942-44); Harold Nicolson (1944-45)
• Leader of the House of Lords – Lord Beaverbrook (1942-44); Lord Moyne (1944-45)
• Minister of War Production – Hugh Dalton (1942-45)
• Minister of Labour – Aneurin Bevan (1942-45)
• Dominions Secretary – Harold Nicolson (1942-44); Leo Amery (1944-45)
[6] In November 1944, Soviet troops swarmed over Berlin and British tanks reached the Baltic Sea, and in March atomic fire rained down on Kokura and Hiroshima – the War was over. But who was to lead the United Kingdom into this new post-War world? The Conservative Party ripped itself apart in the agonies of 1941, and though Churchill was a great war leader, his peacetime record was a catastrophe, and he lacked an electoral mandate. In the election of April 1945, the result seemed almost predetermined, and Sir Oswald Mosely was summoned to kiss hands with the King and as far as he was concerned it was overdue.
Mosely had been a dynamic MP with an independent spirit since entering Parliament as Conservative, though he was already acting as a Party of One. In 1924, in disgust at Austen Chamberlain’s intransigence at the state of the country and joined the Labour Party, coming within tens of votes of unseating Neville Chamberlain in 1925. The following year he was duly elected in Smethwick, and begun to cultivate his political identity, travelling, and ingratiating himself his senior government peers – Ramsay MacDonald took a shine to him, Philip Snowden hated his endless commentary on economic policy, and Clynes saw him as an up-and-coming force in the Labour Party, and put him in Cabinet by the close of the decade with a roaming brief. The National Government was a restrictive time for Mosely, as did much of the Parliamentary Labour Party, having to share the benches with the Conservatives – it was Mosely’s marrow-deep Keynesianism that caused him the most problems, which the Cabinet was closed to, his “Memorandum” on economic policy falling on deaf ears, but Mosely was just one among many in Labour disgruntled by the situation and welcomed the chance to walk out of the government when MacDonald began taking shots at the Prime Minister.
The Labour of 1932 however seemed to hold little prospect for a politician after the battering it received, and Moseley was actively discussing forming a new Party of his own, only for opportunity to land in his lap as the Leadership became vacant. Mosely’s supporters could not easily be codified, and they were best known as “the Mob” and led by the Welshman Nye Bevan, but could count on Deputy Leader Clem Attlee, Ernie Bevin, Fenner Brockway, Hugh Dalton, and the aged Ramsay MacDonald. The competition was lacklustre, and Mosely swept aside the seatless Herbet Morrisson and outdated George Lansbury – Mosely then moved to modernise the Labour Party and its movement, he began addressing mass rallies of members or the Unions. This almost Goebbels-esque approach to things saw that there would be a struggle for Mosely’s control of the Party, and the early years of his leadership looked black indeed, not least as the press regularly attack him on everything from being a Champagne Socialist to a proto-Stalin. There were murmurings of a plot from within the Party leadership in 1935, only for it to fizzle out – an election was round the corner, the public would reject the Mosely experiment and deal Labour another blow, and then the real socialists would be back in charge.
Only the public did not reject Moselyism, in fact they seemed intrigued by it. In the runup to ’36, Mosely was calling for a big push toward patriotic protectionism, disciplined action to get Britain moving again: it was basic slogan slinging, but in the declining mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire and the great port cities it garnered attention and the ballot box reflected, not another rout, but a respectable comeback – Labour moving from barely 50 MPs to within spitting distance of 200. With the whiff of old Joe Chamberlain about him, Mosely continued in the similar vein with much approval and while things heated up abroad, he aspired for Britain to remain aloof, though pushed Britain to rearm as an economic necessity and defensive measure for her own security. When War came Mosely turned up the tempo on Halifax, condemning his inability to prevent hostilities, to have prepared for them, and to prosecute them effectively – in April 1940, he made clear that Labour would not enter any government led by Halifax. Many have accused Mosley of having refused in the hope that Halifax might surrender the Premiership to him, only for the ploy to backfire as the country split over the Armistice that followed. During the war, Mosely did not dare hold back a second time, and fell in behind Churchill as the first Deputy Prime Minister with control over the Domestic brief, leading the Home Front – Mosely kept up national morale, ensured the people were protected, and began looking toward the future.
It was this foresight that rewarded Labour with the Landslide that followed, and some of the most formative years in the 20th Century passed. Britain was transformed into a welfare state, nationalisation sweeping through with a guarantee of employment for returning soldiers, a national health service to keep the population healthy, and the funds of Marshal Plan ignited an automobile and aviation industry that endures without parallel in the West. But Mosely did not merely limit his ambitions to England. In 1949, Mosely became the “Godfather of Europe” at the Treaty of London, where both the Council of Europe was formed and the European Coal and Steel Community consecrated, as Europe took its first steps toward Union. Meanwhile, time was called on the British Empire, as India cut itself loose, and preparations for the self-rule of Asia and Africa – the Commonwealth Technical Programme became the peacetime successor to Empire Air Training Scheme – swapping the old colonial civil servants out for the builders of nations (the unhappy side twin to this policy being the introduction of racialist quotas to immigration from the Commonwealth.)
The Downfall of Mosely can be contributed to many sources – to an extent, it might be said that he outgrew Downing Street, with Europe, the Commonwealth, and the United Nations adding further rungs to the ladder of his ambitions. Not to mention, the novelty of the maverick aristocrat at the top of the Labour movement was wearing thin, and the need for a “proper socialist” to assume the resigns of power becoming more prescient for much of the grassroots. In his personal life, Mosely was facing complications, his wife Cynthia dying shortly after he came to power. Notoriously a womanizer, Mosely had contracted a series of affairs during his marriage, but most concerningly was his favourite paramour and Fascist-sympathizer, Diana Mitford. The two broke off relations in 1940, where war measures almost resulted in Diana’s arrest, and the two did not meet face to face until after Cynthia’s death and they seemed to pick things up where that had left them. It has often been speculated that Mosely was forced to resign at the threat of scandal cause by MI5 documents about Diana’s wartime activities held by his successor that Mosely supposedly tried to suppress.
[7] Herbert Morrison was perhaps the last of those who counted and were still standing in 1951 that could remember Labour before the Mosely contamination set in. Ernie Bevin and Stafford Cripps were both dead, Hugh Dalton had been pickled in the House of Lords, and Clement Attlee was too much in Mosely’s shadow. As such after a brutal contest with the stooge John Strachey, he was whisked off to the Palace and returned with the new Cabinet written on the journey back – Clem Attlee, having resigned as Deputy Leader, was asked to fill in for Morrison at the Foreign Office, while the young Hugh Gaitskell was handed Chancellor; the new Deputy Leader, Nye Bevan, was made Leader of the Common and Lord Privy Seal, with a brief to review Nationalisation; many Moselyites were swept away and new men like Sir Hartley Shawcross and Lewis Silkin brought in. Unlike Mosley, Morrison was a socialist, through and through, and he aimed to prove his convictions.
Perhaps second only to his Socialism, was Morrison’s status as a Londoner. While out of Parliament in the early 30s, as Mosely was taking the national party, Morrison carved out a fief of his own in the Capital. Such was his influence, that Mosely avoided campaigning in the City after 1936 – leaving Morrison to hone the art of his own politicking. This, along with the absent field other big figures present in the earlier government, allowed Morrison to drive forward his vision so effectively for the Labour government. The first step was to rethink the programme of Nationalisation, which had concentrated powers of the industries in supposedly technocratic boards and directors. The Prime Minister aimed to roll back the centralisation and devolve the power of the boards to managers and workers, who were themselves given stakes in their employment – it wasn’t syndicalist, but it was a novelty that soon proved out under the stewardship of Aneurin Bevan. Education soon began to change under Morrison also, spearheaded by James Chuter Ede, a passionate educator himself, that began pushing the limit to that expected of the 1944 Education Act: comprehensive education took its first steps in Britain. Domestically, things were on the up-and-up.
Abroad became the true point of contention. The Cold War was coming into full swing and Morrison was, like his predecessor, was no friend to Moscow and aimed to take a greater part in tackling the Russian Bear. He counted on a close partnership with Harry Truman, elected again in 1952, and agreed the stalling of certain agreements that the previous Prime Minister had made in handing over certain Overseas Territories in lieu of much of Britain’s war debt. Instead, British troops would maintain most of their positions in the Far East and elsewhere and deploy to other theatres as the American’s request: Korea being the main one (from which Britain had been supportive of but absent on the ground) but also Cuba and Iran. These conflicts, and the inevitable ‘police actions’ required for the British to main stability in their Empire, coincided with the advent of television in British life. The climax of this story came during the bloody Suez Crisis of 1954, where the new Egyptian strongman, Colonel Nasser having seized the Canal zone by force – Morrison’s reaction was to hit back swiftly and with overwhelming force, British forces stormed the Canal, and put the Egyptian Army to route within a week and rode on to Cairo to force a regime change. The world was spinning at the rapidity of the event, even the Americans who had gone un-consulted, though they did not have time to pick a side as newsreel footage appeared of the Guards Armoured reenacting the Battle of Tobruk against unarmed students. Back home the people were appalled, but the reaction from the Arab world became the real punishment. The Oil Embargo put the crush on the already stretched British economy, which was bad enough, but the threat to expand it to America brought the world to a halt overnight.
Protests in Trafalgar Square and heated exchanges in the Cabinet room were one thing, but the ire of Washington was another thing. The British evacuated Egypt as quickly as they had occupied, beaten and in ignominy, and so too was Morrison. The Labour government was as good as over, and everyone knew it – all that remained was to run down the clock to the election.
• Prime Minister – Oswald Mosely (1945-51); Herbert Morrison (1951-55)
• Deputy Prime Minister– Clement Attlee (1945-51); Aneurin Bevan (1951-55)
• Lord Chancellor – The Viscount Addison (1945-50); The Viscount Jowitt (1950-55)
• Minister of Defence – Oswald Mosely (1945-50); A.V. Alexander (1950-51); Herbert Morrison (1951-55)
• Lord Privy Seal – Clement Attlee (1945-47); The Viscount Stansgate (1947-51); Aneurin Bevan (1951-55)
• Chancellor of the Exchequer – Hugh Dalton (1945-47); Clement Attlee (1947-51); Hugh Gaitskell (1951-55)
• Foreign Secretary – Sir Stafford Cripps (1945-50); Herbert Morrison (1950-51); Clement Attlee (1951-55)
• Home Secretary – Herbert Morrison (1945-50); John Strachey (1950-51); Sir Hartley Shawcross (1951-55)
• Secretary of State for the Colonies – A.V. Alexander (1945-51); Arthur Creech Jones (1951-55)
• Secretary of State for the Dominions – Oliver Baldwin (1945-47); Arthur Creech Jones (1950-51); Philip Noel-Baker (1951-55)
• Secretary of State for India and the Far East – Harold Nicolson (1945-50)
• First Lord of the Admiralty – James Chuter Ede (1945-51); Patrick Gordon Walker (1951-55)
• Secretary of State for War – Ernest Bevin (1945-51); Tom Johnston (1951-55)
• Secretary of State for Air – The Viscount Stansgate (1945-47); John Strachey (1947-50); Richard Stokes (1950-55)
• Secretary of State for Scotland – Emanuel Shinwell (1945-50); Tom Johnston (1950-51); Malcolm MacDonald (1951-55)
• Minister of Education – Tom Johnston (1945-50); Emanuel Shinwell (1950-51); James Chuter Ede (1951-55)
• Minister of Labour – Jack Lawson (1945-47); Jim Griffiths (1947-51); Alfred Robens (1951-55)
• Minister of Health – Aneurin Bevan (1945-51); Lewis Silkin (1951-55)
• Minister for Agriculture – Arthur Creech Jones (1945-47); Fenner Brockway (1947-51); Glenvil Hall (1951-55)
• President of the Board of Trade – Ellen Wilkinson (1945-47); Hugh Gaitskell (1947-51); Harold Wilson (1951-55)
• Minister for Fuel and Power – Arthur Greenwood (1945-47); Harold Wilson (1948-51); Edith Summerskill (1951-55)
[8] The ascension of the Rab Butler to the premiership came after a long period of trauma for British conservativism. The bastion of the establishment and the natural Party of government had torn itself in two during the traumatic war years, with a break away group of former Cabinet Ministers led by Churchill setting up a party in opposition to the armistice, the Constitutionalists, while the rump Conservatives that remained under Halifax merely stood paralyzed in office. Among that rump was one Rab Butler, an MP since 1930 and having served in various junior posts at the India and the Foreign Office – these positions held him in low regard with Winston Churchill, but his skill and zeal was such was that he would have been wasted in the crisis of a war. Though not in Cabinet, Butler had full control of the Education brief, wherein he oversaw the landmark 1944 Education Act.
After the War was done, and with the opposition a mess of Constitutionalists, Conservatives, and the remnants of the National government of the 30’s that had survived the scrapheap, Butler urged for unity and reconciliation. Many considered him to be a bore in this period, obsessing over Robert Peel – and soon began to play the part of him to Churchill’s Duke of Wellington. With the Old Man himself ascending to the House of Lords, it was left to Anthony Eden and Butler to put together the new party, the Conservative name too synonymous with Appeasement and the Armistice of 1940 for the public. The National name was meant to be one for the future, of a new nationalism in Britain uncontaminated by imperialism – in Scotland, the caveat of ‘Unionist’ was added to the name, to ensure that this was not a strictly English politics – and it had the connotations of being descended from the happy Chamberlain days of the early 30’s, of everyone in it together.
This new hodgepodge of a Party had its baptism of fire in the 1950 election and did as well as any new Party might have expected to – the government’s majority had been reduced from 150 seats to 50, still significant, but it meant that people were starting to take note of the Opposition besides Churchill’s ravings about the Welfare State being a backdoor route for Bolshevism. Though the National leadership never stooped to this, having actively encouraged certain measures, there main point came from what they called the ‘excess’ of Labour’s methods which as a criticism began to pick during the idiosyncratic approach that Morrison began to take to Nationalised industries. Such it was that Eden and Butler were occupying the centre ground, and were looking forward to test their metal in the next election, though not even they could have expected the Suez Crisis to blow up so tremendously in the governments face there was, however, a fly in the ointment to this success – Eden’s health was in decline, having suffered on and off with stomach ulcers since the 20’s, he had during the War developed a dependency on amphetamines to keep working and while British paratroopers were dropping on Egypt he was undergoing an ultimately botched cholecystectomy. Further operations were required to correct the failings of the procedure, but the fact remained that Eden would never regain his full health – as such leadership of the Nationals fell to, in Churchill’s words: “that bloody Butler.”
1955 gave the Nationals a powerful majority in the House of Commons, and Butler were sent for by the King. With Morrison covered in blood, Butler was allowed to reinvent his party as the peacemakers without the connotations of Appeasement and rather than fight over every inch of the Empire and beyond in the name of anti-Communism Butler sped up the process of decolonisation. Butler’s Foreign Secretary, Harold Macmillan, captured the new mood with his ‘Winds of Change’ speech in Nairobi to the applause of the newly independent national assembly of Kenya. Although holdouts remained in Malaya and Rhodesia, by the end of his premiership, Butler had supervised the independence of most the remaining British Empire.
At home, Butler had an economy reeling from the shocks caused by Suez. Petrol rationing had to be reintroduced, and the follow of American dollars into the economy from Harry Truman was switched off. Like Mosely before him, Butler aimed for a British solution to the problem with a European twist. With bombsites still common place in major British city, a construction programme was ordered, sweeping away the last of the Victorian slums and the ruins left by the Luftwaffe with new housing estates, towns and low rising blocks of flats sprouting up everywhere.
Industrially, the Suez Crisis and petrol rationing would have some unintended consequences, as the British automotive industry was forced to adapt to produce leaner, more efficient models like the Dagenham Anglia and culminating with the iconic Leyland Mini. Also, as West Germany began looking to rearm herself in the face of the Warsaw Pact, the sorry state of Sterling made cheap British arms attractive goods for such an eager buyer – this militarised Keynesianism became characterised by the popular term ‘Butskellism’ and was the economic model that Britian came to follow for the next 20 years and the lasting image of the post-War consensus.
The electorate rewarded Butler in 1959 with another respectable majority and the National Party’s experiment had proved it staying power, as had Butler. With few exceptions, he was a well-liked and respected party leader that might have carried on in but the early 60’s would prove an onerous time as the Cold War threatened to turn hot. The Turkish Missile Crisis brought the world close to midnight and though Butler was far removed from the events, the idea that he was as much a prisoner to world events as anyone else turned Butler sour, and his stomach for the fight gone – Butler would manage that fairest of feats for a British Prime Minister as he left Downing Street on his own terms.
• Prime Minister – Richard Austen Butler (1955-63)
• Lord Chancellor – The Lord Kilmuir (1955-63)
• Lord President and Leader of the Lords – The Marquess of Salisbury (1955-57); The Viscount Hailsham (1957-59); The Viscount Dilhorne (1959-63)
• Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the Commons – David Eccles (1955-59); Iain Macleod (1959-63)
• Chancellor of the Exchequer – Oliver Lyttelton (1955-57); Iain Macleod (1957-59); Harold Macmillan (1959-63)
• Foreign Secretary – Harold Macmillan (1955-59); Selwyn Lloyd (1959-61); The Earl Home (1961-63)
• Home Secretary – Selwyn Lloyd (1955-59); Henry Brooke (1959-63)
• Secretary of State for Commonwealth and Colonies – The Earl Home (1955-61); Duncan Sandys (1961-63)
• Secretary of State for Europe – Duncan Sandys (1955-61); Edward Heath (1961-63)
• President of the Board of Trade – The Viscount Hailsham (1955-57); Edward Heath (1957-61); David Eccles (1961-63)
• Secretary of State for Air – Peter Thorneycroft (1955-57); Derick Heathcoat-Amory (1957-59); Alan Lennox-Boyd (1959-61); Geoffrey Rippon (1961-63)
• Minister for Defence – Harry Crookshank (1955-57); Peter Thorneycroft (1957-59); The Viscount Hailsham (1959-63)
• Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster – Derick Heathcoat-Amory (1955-57); Alan Lennox-Boyd (1957-59); Reginald Maudling (1959-63)
• Minister of Education – Antony Head (1955-59); Derick Heathcoat-Amory (1959-61); Julian Amery (1961-63)
• Secretary of State for Scotland – John Maclay (1955-63)
• Minister of Agriculture – Walter Monckton (1955-59); Christopher Soames (1959-63)
• Minister of Labour – The Lord Mills (1955-59); Julian Amery (1959-61); Keith Joseph (1961-63)
• Minister of Housing – The Lord Mills (1955-59); Edward Boyle (1959-61); Enoch Powell (1961-63)
• Minister of Health – Alan Lennox-Boyd (1955-57); Edward Boyle (1957-59); Enoch Powell (1959-61); Peter Thorneycroft (1961-63)
[9] The Shortest serving Prime Minister of the 20th Century and one of the most unfortunate, in the ten months that Lord Hailsham resided in Number 10 he would announce to the House of Commons and the World the death of the King and the President of the United States. The Lord Hailsham was a surprise choice for the National Party to succeed Butler as Prime Minister, but one that is understandable in hindsight. Under Butler, the National Party had been the centre ground and unshakable from that position, but the fact remained that like the Conservative Party before it, she was the home of the Right in British politics and counted on the backing of many an old Tory.
Among these was their architype, the bullish, Old Etonian, classicist and Christian ultra-conservative: Quintin Hogg, The Viscount Hailsham. His rise laid in Butler’s failure to name a successor, and the three-way contest that emerged should have been a cutthroat struggle but for two facts: 1) Macmillan was old and ill 2) Douglas-Home was aloof and out of touch. It remained Hailsham’s to steal, and he did and made for the Palace, only to be greeted by the Princess Elizabeth, her Father, George VI, was on his death bed and the duty to appoint the new Prime Minister fell to the heir apparent. A week later His Majesty had passed away.
Under this cloud, Hailsham acted with characteristic combat and reshuffled the government. When the dust settled the pretext of the government being of the centre ground was over, and Tory Right were in ascendency and they aimed to prove the fact: the suspension of the death penalty was receded, the laxing immigration quotas were tightened and loud noises from the new Chancellor about privatisation of the entire economy. These were bold moves, and excited many, though many found them worrisome. Many of the young and upcoming of the National Party were worried by these announcements in an election year and so close after the ascension of a new Prime Minister and a new monarch. But Hailsham was never one to shy from a fight. And therein laid the problem.
Hailsham was a bruiser and not popular for it. For an unelected peer this was a serious problem, as their only exposure to the man was his appearances at public debates, and a man of such strong opinion as Hailsham attracted equally strong opinions in others. Planning on a Winter election, Hailsham first had to abandon his peerage and enter the House of Commons. A similar enabling bill had been drawn up during Lord Halifax’s day but was never moved into legislation. On the November 10th, the act was passed, on the 14th Hailsham announced the election date of the 30th and disavowed his peerage on the 21st (making him uniquely a Prime Minister without a seat in either House) to hit the campaign trail. It was while at an election debate two days later that he received the fact and made public, that President Richard Nixon had been shot and killed in Miami, Florida.
The virtues of the Anglo-American relationship were brought to the forefront for the first time in years. Credentials of which the Conservative Party had very little. The Leader of the Opposition on the other hand had been to Washington more than once and had the year before met with Nixon in the White House. It was a disadvantage that Hailsham did not need and come not overcome, who while though no anti-American, counted on no warmth to any country not his own.
In the early hours of the morning of the 1st, Quintin Hogg rose to be congratulated on his election to the House of Commons for the first time in thirteen years. It was bittersweet, as by then it was apparent that due to a respectable showing by the Liberal Party that he would not be able to form a government, and by mornings end it would be no trouble for Labour to – come the end of the decade, he would be Lord Hailsham once more and back in the Lords.
• Prime Minister – The Viscount Hailsham
• Lord Chancellor – The Lord Kilmuir
• Leader of the House of Lords – The Viscount Hailsham
• Leader of the House of Commons – Reginald Maudling
• Chancellor of the Exchequer – Peter Thorneycroft
• Foreign Secretary – Duncan Sandys
• Home Secretary – The Viscount Dilhorne
• Defence Minister – Julian Amery
• Housing Minister – Margaret Thatcher
• Health Minister – Keith Joseph
• Transport Minister – Geoffrey Rippon
• Education Minister – Edward Heath
• Labour Minister – Iain Macleod
• President of the Board of Trade – Enoch Powell
• Secretary of State for Commonwealth – Christopher Soames
• Secretary of State for Scotland – The Earl Home
1970-1976: Michael Foot (Labour) [12] 1971 (Majority) def. Reginald Maudling (National); Arthur Holt (Liberal)
1976-1987:Margaret Thatcher (National) [13] 1976 (Majority) def. Michael Foot (Labour); Jo Grimond (Liberal)
1980 (Majority) def. Barbara Castle (Labour); Jo Grimond (Liberal)
1984 (Majority) def. Denis Healey (Labour); Alan Beith (Liberal)
[10] Leader of the Labour Party since 1957, Hugh Gaitskell was a new force in British politics. In a future without both Mosley and Morrison, the future of the Labour Party remained up for grabs and found itself caught between two big figures – the reformist, domineering former Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell and the lion of the Left, and Deputy Leader Aneurin Bevan. It was Bevan’s closeness to previous Labour leaders that kept him from the leadership, and so Gaitskell swept up the needed votes, but still found stiff opposition to his efforts to reform the structure of the Labour – Gaitskell’s trade union allies and the Bevanites linked to block the attempt to remove Clause Four of the Labour Constitution. Nevertheless, Gaitskell and his allies were able to reshape the political strategy of the Labour Party, the net result: in many ways a cigarette paper couldn’t have put a cigarette paper between the manifestos of 1959, which proved to the detriment of Labour, but in 1963 proved a boon, as Hailsham lurched the Nationals to the Right – Labour, with the death of Nye Bevan in 1960, and no one on the Left yet to take up the mantel, was immune to such critiques.
Regrettably, there would be no honeymoon for Gaitskell. Divisions that had gone quiet in the latter period of Opposition would reopen. By Gaitskell’s sudden death on the hot summer of 1968, he had become exceedingly controversial, and his party divided. Nevertheless, there were certainly achievements that can be pointed to, as perhaps the most positive decision that Gaitskell made was making his acolyte Roy Jenkins his Home Secretary, in which position he excelled in liberalising Britain. Capital punishment was abolished for good and all; homosexuality was legalised, as was abortion; the path for divorce was eased; and many forms of censorship were ended. While others cowed, Gaitskell insisted that the government put these Bills at the top of its agenda – the side-effect of these also necessitated long overdue reforms to the House of Lords in the Parliament Act 1964. Education also received top billing in the government’s priority – the Open University was founded under his direction. And comprehensive schools were rolled out nationwide, followed by the abolition of grammar schools; both heartfelt measures aimed at ending the class divide in Britain. An effort to abolish public schools took its first steps as well. Perhaps most long overdue of its reforms, however, was the end of the racialist restrictions to immigration that the government had placed on immigration to and from the Commonwealth, part of wider measures to eliminate racial discrimination in all elements of British society.
In economic terms, certain quarters of the economy were booming, but others had yet to recover from the last Labour government and wages were slow to rise. Gaitskell had some success in the 50’s by introducing a national income policy with the consent of the unions which kept wages even throughout national and private sectors. The expectant stance of the government that this policy would continue frustrated many, including Gaitskell’s union allies, which necessitated its statutory enforcement by Harold Wilson’s Treasury. To the Labour Left, the continuing restraint that this required in spending terms was a dear frustration to bear and, in their minds, signalled a betrayal by Wilson – and paddled off to their own reservation to cause Gaitskell further trouble, having counted on Wilson to have them tow the Party line.
At the same time, Gaitskell was coming under increasing pressure from newly elected President Johnson in Washington for a committal to Vietnam. The decision was not one taken lightly, but Gaitskell was committed to renewing the ‘special relationship’ that had begun to lapse under Butler, and Britain had also wrapped up its successful anti-Communist operations in Malaysia and Borneo at the same time. It was hoped that the presence of British troops and strategies might accomplish the same results. Naysayers in the early days were already pointing to the Suez adventure as to advise against the measures, though the argument against this came from the fact that this adventure came with the explicit endorsement of the United States. Although the war in Vietnam never garnered the same amount of attention in Britain as it did in the US, the use of crueller and more extreme methods to suppress the Vietcong prompted revolt in the Cabinet. The Prime Minister himself was horrified by the results and by the conclusion of the Tet Offensive was looking to extricate British forces from the conflict.
Problems came when Tony Benn, a noted backbencher, began issuing calls for an inquiry into British participation in the War. More extremist opponents of the war both then and now claimed that Gaitskell had been coopted into the war by a Capitalist conspiracy, nevertheless the correlation between Britain’s short-term economic interest with the sudden influx of dollars into the UK economy and the arrival of British troops in Indochina did raise eyebrows. No formal agreement ever seems to have existed, but the understanding between the two leaders seems to have been implicit. Other quarters also began to blacken the government’s foreign policy – Britian’s engagement in Vietnam, prompted the white settler government of Ian Smith in Rhodesia to declare their independence. With its attention in Southeast Asia, the British military lacked the means to intervene, not least when the apartheid regime in South Africa increased their troop presence in Namibia at the same time British troops in Zambia went on alert.
As summer moved from its peak, Gaitskell was reaching his limit. Physically he was exhausted, and doctors had cautioned him after a bad bout of the flu rendered him bedridden most of the prior December and counselled him against travel. Letting others move in his place, and the condition of the economy in the election, another healthy majority followed for Gaitskell. By July, his health had recovered and permitted his attending a conference in Paris over the future of Europe that became marked by his arguments with President de Gaulle. Returning to London, a week later Gaitskell was admitted to hospital and though the doctors made an incredible effort as the month turned, he died, aged 62 – to the Labour Right, he remained a martyr, to the rest a divisive figure who left their potential unfulfilled.
Prime Minister – Hugh Gaitskell (1963-68)
First Secretary of State – Douglas Jay (1963-66); George Brown (1966-68)
Lord Chancellor – The Lord Gardiner (1963-68)
Leader of the House of Commons – Michael Stewart (1963-66); James Callaghan (1966-68)
Leader of the House of Lords – The Viscount Attlee (1963-66); The Earl of Longford (1966-68)
Chancellor of the Exchequer – Harold Wilson (1963-68)
Foreign Secretary – George Brown (1963-68)
Home Secretary – Roy Jenkins (1963-68)
Secretary of State for the Commonwealth – Patrick Gordon Walker (1963-65); Michael Stewart (1966-68)
Secretary of State for Defence – Denis Healey (1963-68)
Secretary of State for Education – Anthony Crosland (1963-66); Fred Peart (1966-68)
Secretary of State for Employment – James Callaghan (1963-66); Alfred Robens (1966-68)
Secretary of State for Social Services – Anthony Greenwood (1963-66); Judith Hart (1966-68)
Minister of Health – Judith Hart (1963-66); Barbara Castle (1966-68)
Minister of Agriculture – Arthur Bottomley (1963-66); Richard Crossman (1966-68)
Minister for Housing – Richard Crossman (1963-66); Michael Foot (1966-68)
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster – Alfred Robens (1963-66); Anthony Crosland (1966-68)
Minister of Overseas Development – Michael Foot (1963-66); George Thomson (1966-68)
Minister for Power – Michael Stewart (1963-66); Edward Short (1966-68)
President of the Board of Trade – Douglas Jay (1963-68)
Secretary of State for Scotland – George Thomson (1963-66); Willie Ross (1966-68)
Secretary of State for Wales – Cledwyn Hughes (1963-68)
Minister for Transport – Barbara Castle (1963-66); Anthony Greenwood (1966-68)
[11] The 1968 Labour Leadership contest was, as Tony Crosland said at the time, between “a drunk” and “a crook”. The drunk being George Brown, Gaitskell’s loyal foreign secretary and so much the John Bull, Cold Warrior that Nikita Khrushchev actively avoided having to meet him after their one and only introduction when the Soviet Leader passed through London in 1960. Brown had not been expected to win the contest, nevertheless, when Anthony Greenwood threw his hat in as a “straight” Left wing candidate, as much to challenge Wilson as anything else, Brown suddenly became the Parliamentary Labour Party’s uncontroversial safe bet – oh, how they would rue that assumption.
When Brown was seated in Downing Street, he immediately ordered a reshuffle to resolve the two main issues of the start of his premiership, namely: the extrication of British forces from Vietnam, and his despised rival Wilson. In Brown’s mind, he solved both issues in one, he not only moved Wilson from the Treasury to the Foreign Office, but as was most Left-Wing members of the Cabinet shifted to Foreign Affairs briefs and merely told to get on with resolving the situation in Indochina. Predictably, complications followed, not least because Wilson had enjoyed his period as Chancellor and remained determined to keep his hand on the tiller when the economy was entering shaky footing; and was now tasked with a brief and policies that he had been ambivalent about at best and hostile to at worst. Promptly, the policy of Britain’s withdrawal from Vietnam was a disaster – while the Johnson administration envisioned a slow, strategic withdrawal, involving the replacement of foreign troops with South Vietnamese, training and equipping them to hold the status quo; Britain’s policy makers rapidly began moving themselves out as fast as possible – the result being that at a time when all parties were aiming to deescalate, the US felt forced to escalate in the holes British troops were leaving behind them and any good faith that Brown hoped to have within his own Party or with Washington was whipped away from him before he could realise what was happening.
Economically, things were turning against Brown as well. Speculation against Sterling was a running theme of economic policy since the end of the War, with many predicting that devaluation might be inevitable. Mosely and Morrison had managed to avoid the issue, Butler had inherited a weak Sterling after Suez, and given a free hand to rebuild it and Gaitskell had used American goodwill to keep it floating, but Brown had squandered his by winter ‘68. To resolve the situation, Brown grabbed onto the first lifeline he could find: Europe.
The golden era of Britain as the leader of European unity had lapsed by the late 50’s and Gaitskell had prevented most of the efforts by de Gaulle and the Germans to move to a greater Economic Community in Europe – a move that had vexed many of his own supporters, Brown included. Nevertheless, Brown spent 1969 shuttling from one European capital to another to speed up the process that had only gotten off the ground after his predecessors’ death. The French proved hard to overcome and were sceptical that any new European deal would be a silver bullet for the British economy, but that they themselves would be infected by the same sickness. Yet Brown persevered, and the Treaty of Bonn was signed in September and the Bill oven-ready for the House of Commons to pass.
Although the diplomacy was impressive on Brown’s part, the Cabinet was split on the issue and Brown had long put off any internal debate on his pet project. In the Cabinet meeting before the vote on the European Community Bill, Brown shouted down all his opponents, mercilessly prompting a walkout. Douglas Jay, Barbara Castle, and Peter Shore promptly resigned on principle of the policy, but most damaging for Brown was when Harold Wilson followed them who had grudgingly put up with the Prime Minister pursuing the policy without consulting his Foreign Secretary. It looked as though the Bill might fail to make it but for a last-minute U-turn by the National Party, after Shadow Foreign Secretary Edward Heath’s herculean effort to convince his Party Leader of the merits of the policy. Britain would join with European Community, but Brown had broken his Cabinet, his back and much the rest of his anatomy to do it.
Then the facts of Brown’s deal began to kick-in as French Premier Georges Pompidou had insisted that Britain devalue the Pound upon ratification of the Treaty – the very thing he had sought to prevent by going to Europe! The policy was greeted as humiliation by the Right, as Enoch Powell rose to relish, while Harold Wilson was seemingly vindicated. Worse still, devaluation prompted the Treasury to batten down the hatches, cuts were planned, and the national incomes policy tightened even further. All measures prompted the coal miners to come out on strike, fed-up with yet more austerity imposed on them by their own, and similar wildcat strikes around the country. Although the government managed to negotiate a deal with miners, the message was clear – the Prime Minister had lost control of the country and his drinking habits, as even Private Eye noticed his becoming increasingly “tired and emotional”. Jim Callaghan, in a move to stand up for the unions, challenged Brown for the leadership after papers circulated of a new Bill on union powers. Wilson also put his hat in, and the Prime Minister finished last in the first round: he would not be standing in the second.
[12] To the shock of many in the press, James Callaghan had a poor showing in the leadership election. Instead, the leading man of the Left for the leadership was the owlish figure of Michael Foot, who came in at the centre of the PLP’s “Stop the Rot” movement – aimed at overturning the divisiveness of the previous years. Foot’s main rival for the leadership was Harold Wilson, the frustrated and calculating, after his replacement at the Foreign Office Roy Jenkins ruled himself out on account of his divisive Europeanism. A coalition of the down-and-out Left, dissolute moderates and the reasonable Right aligned in favour of the former editor of Tribune.
It was a peculiar choice, but they were peculiar times. A noted republican, Foot was not naïve about what to expect from the press after the Palace rang for him. The Daily Mail was foaming that the country could expect its imminent collapse, and the Telegraph reported that the Royal Family were planning to seek refuge in Canada or the West Indies – the kind of rhetoric that people hadn’t heard since the Earl of Chartwell was growling about Mosely’s Labour. In a rare display of speed, the usually don-like Foot met whipped round to meetings with both Roy Jenkins and Denis Healey to persuade them to stay in place. Both men were impressed by his pragmatic attitude, mollifying Jenkins with his determination not to get bogged down on the European issue, and Healey by that olive branch to defend the integrity of Labour in power. Only in the minds of right-wing press editors was the honour of Michael Foot cause for contempt, while he envisaged a term as leader in which he mediated between factions, led its strategies and the UK’s greatest advocate to the World.
It was a time when a good advocate was in sore need. By August 1970, devaluation was proving an issue as the Treasury had seemingly overshot itself, and in the prior budget Healey had forced through budget cuts in anticipation, while his officials thought he had gone too far when the pound crashed it was apparent that they had not done enough. All this came in time for the Labour Party Conference where the trade unions were expected to push for mass nationalisation. Foot, mindful that his Chancellor was in Singapore negotiating with the IMF in between meetings with Commonwealth finance ministers, rose to unleash his oratory and invocated the spirit of Nye Bevan to mollify them. When Healey returned, Foot was astounded at the vicious terms that the IMF would impose on the UK’s sovereignty. But with the stakes as high as they were, there was no other option – the alternative of facing the consequences of devaluation, and of possible further devaluation was acceptable to neither man. Nevertheless, the economy managed to be stabilized, and the National leadership in such disarray, Foot sought a mandate in 1971 and was won a slender a mandate, despite crowing from the Right that Labour policy was made at the beck and call of the TUC.
Foot had his own bone to pick with the unions, however – keenly aware from his own Plymouth constituency that Labour’s grand designs to redraw the British economy meant little to the average constituent, especially those who didn’t have the luxury and protection of working in heavily unionized sectors. Conscious many working-class, natural Labour supporters were worried about the Unions being able to “hold the country hostage”, Foot sponsored a Bill by his friend and new Employment Secretary, Barbara Castle, giving the Secretary powers to enforce settlements in inter-union disputes and unofficial disputes, and enforce penalties for non-compliance. Again, Foot almost came into struggle with the Trade Unions, but after a conversation with Jack Jones, the Prime Minister effectively shamed the latter into compliance citing that if European Unity was a threat to Democratic Socialism in Britain, so to were closed shops and the ability of Unions to contravene the power of industries that had been practising workplace democracy since the Morrison days. Jones would accept meekly the new Industrial Relations Act, and the continuation of the national incomes policy. For his trouble, though nobody would thank him in the long term, Foot had saved the idea of Keynesianism for Prime Ministers that would follow and sowed the seeds for further Party scrutiny on groups like the Militant Tendency that had begun to infiltrate Labour.
A second aspect that Foot would be credited with would be the nuclear deterrent, which had been at the centre of public debate since the late 50’s. Inevitably, the cuts required by the IMF inevitably required biting into the defence budget and the unilateralist Foot was only too keen to rid the United Kingdom of it nuclear burden, but as a pragmatist could not hope to move the military or even his own Party with sentimentality alone. Britain’s nuclear programme by the 1970’s was centred on the long-outdated V-bomber fleet and increasingly flimsy Blue Streak programme, both since Butler’s premiership. Efforts to modernize an independent nuclear deterrent had floundered since then: Gaitskell, out of patriotism, had refused to surrender the independent deterrent to American intervention; and Brown found his overtures to buy into America’s Polaris a slammed door in his face. Surprisingly, Foot found an ally in the form of his Chancellor, Denis Healey, the NATO loyalist and an Atlanticist and Defence Secretary without parallel, who cited fiscal purposes as the main reason for abandoning the strategic nuclear deterrent. Roy Jenkins put up resistance around the Cabinet table, but when the suggestion that rather than ending the strategic deterrent, Britain might instead withdraw the Army from Northern Ireland and the Rhine, he soon accepted the proposal. Nevertheless, Foot could not end the UK’s entire nuclear arsenal: and to this day retains a tactical nuclear force in the hands of the RAF and, if needed, the Fleet Air Arm; as well as a nuclear energy programme that is peerless within Europe in the hands of the National Nuclear Corporation, though days of British Prime Ministers have Armageddon in their pocket ended with Foot.
By 1973, the economic crises that defined Foot’s ascension were over – Britain having missed out on the latest Arab Oil Embargo for a change. He had seen Britain through the worst. But the electorate was feeling Labour fatigue. In 1974, the Prime Minister floated the idea that he might resign so that a fresh perspective might be welcomed to the electorate, but his friends and former enemies talked him down – the unity that Foot had cultivated was preferable to idea of a hypothetical return to disunity. So, he carried on, all the way to the Palace for the election. But the National Party of 1976 was a different kettle of fish to that of 1963, even 1973, and though Foot would be vilified for it at the time, he would be the last Labour Prime Minister for twelve years.
Prime Minister – George Brown (1968-70); Michael Foot (1970-76)
Lord Chancellor – The Lord Gardiner (1968-76)
Leader of the House of Commons – Fred Peart (1968-71); Edward Short (1971-76)
Leader of the House Lords – The Lord Shackleton (1968-76)
Chancellor of the Exchequer – Denis Healey (1968-76)
Foreign Secretary – Harold Wilson (1968-70); Roy Jenkins (1970-76)
Home Secretary – James Callaghan (1968-71); Shirley Williams (1971-76)
Secretary of State for Employment – Roy Mason (1968-71); Barbara Castle (1971-76)
Secretary of State for Education – Edward Short (1968-71); Roy Hattersley (1971-76)
Secretary of State for Industry – Anthony Crosland (1968-71); Anthony Greenwood (1971-73); Eric Varley (1973-76)
Secretary of State for Defence – Anthony Greenwood (1968-71); Anthony Crosland (1971-73); Peter Shore (1973-76)
Secretary of State for Environment – Eric Varley (1968-71); Reg Prentice (1971-73); Anthony Crosland (1973-76)
Secretary of State for Industry – Bob Melish (1968-71); George Thomas (1971-73); Reg Prentice (1973-76)
Secretary of State for Social Services – Michael Stewart (1968-71); Peter Shore (1971-76)
Minister of State for Overseas Development – Barbara Castle (1968-70); Reg Prentice (1970-71); David Owen (1971-76)
Secretary of State for Trade – Peter Shore (1968-70); Cledwyn Hughes (1970-76)
Secretary of State for Health – George Thomas (1968-71); John Silkin (1971-76)
Secretary of State for Scotland – William Ross (1968-76)
Secretary of State for Wales – Cledwyn Hughes (1968-70); The Lord Elwyn-Jones (1970-76)
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland – James Callaghan (1971-76)
Minister for Agriculture – Reg Prentice (1968-70); David Owen (1970-71); Albert Booth (1971-76)
Minister for Local Government – Shirley Williams (1968-71); Eric Varley (1971-72); Harold Lever (1972-76)
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster – Michael Foot (1968-70); Harold Lever (1970-72); Eric Varley (1972-73); Bob Melish (1973-76)
[13] Little can be said of Mrs (or Baroness) Thatcher that has not already been written. Her legacy might well simply be “the Iron Lady, longest serving British Prime Minister of modern times” but that would be surrendering to simplicity for the sake of it. Thatcher dominated Britain of the 1980’s, true enough earing her status as the Iron Lady, but more than that: she would define the image of Britain for decades to follow and the identity of the National Party forever. Though naysayers within her own Party might state to the contrary, Thatcher invented the ideology of the National Party was eclectic at best. A broad coalition which under Butler and Eden had been an eccentric alliance between One-Nationists like themselves, “Shire Tories”, frothing anti-everywhere nationalists like Enoch Powell, and strict monetarists like Peter Thorneycroft. The success of Thatacher would be to fuse these factions into one coherent ideology for the Party to follow: the free market, privatisation, centralisation, deregulation, and nationalism.
Arriving in Parliament in the election of 1955, representing Orpington, Thatcher spent the early Butler years on the backbenches where she was singled out as one to watch by the leadership, being promoted to junior positions within the European Office and later the Treasury. Surprising many, Thatcher was elevated to the Cabinet as Housing Minister by Hailsham, where she buttressed the new Chancellor’s monetarism – in her new position, Thatcher was responsible for the only lasting effect of the Hailsham government when she published a white paper on the rights of tenants that included purchasing their council houses. Through the 60’s she kept quiet and stayed away from the big personality clashes between Maudling, Powellites, Heathites and concentrated on shaping policy with her mentor Kieth Joseph. 1968 and ’71 were great disappointments to the National Party, with its members and supporters left grasping for an answer for the listlessness they found themselves in when the odds seemed to favour them, but it would transpire that there was something rotten in the State of Denmark as a pair of scandals rocked the National Party leadership and paved the way for Thatcher. Maudling’s conduct came under attack when the Metropolitan police launched probes into his business dealings with John Poulson in the run up to ’71 election, and his successor John Profumo soon had his own tackle tangled in a scandal about his former mistress and so the road was eventually cleared for Thatcher.
Thatcher’s main virtue in the campaign of ’76 was her harsh stance on inflation, which despite the best efforts of the Foot and Healey kept regurgitating itself on them. Her monetarist approach of cutting huge swathes out of government budgets, rather than the timid approach of her predecessor that had been negated solely by the need for the IMF bailout. Capitalising on the humiliation that the bailout had connoted to the public, Thatcher and her supporters in the press availed the nation of the patriotism in her prudence. Nevertheless, despite her radical vision Thatcher was forced to move slowly; Britain was becoming increasingly divisive in its political discourse, and Thatcher had a party that was far from being in her own image. Quietly over the rest of the decade, Thatcher would peel away the basis those who were against her, and in 1979 this old guard were swept away in what became known as “the Night of the Long Knives” and although there would be clashes with the so-called “wets” and “dries”, Thatcher held all within her hand going forward.
By the end of her tenure, Thatcher would privatise, coal, gas, North Sea oil, water, electricity, steel, council houses, telecommunication; government shares in the automobile, aviation and electronic sectors were sold off; and the financial severely deregulated. Thatcher would take a slower approach than her ideological soulmate, President Ronald Reagan, whose single term in office was met with ignominy after Jack Kennedy evicted him from the White House the year after Thatcher came to power, and there was no effort to reverse or discourage the Morrisonian approach for worker participation – many of the newly privatised industries allowed their employees to buy shares at special discounts, and spots on their boards opened up to managers of longstanding. Despite the efforts to show continuity in Thatcherism with “Butskellism”, escalating violence, strike action, riots characterized her first term and the long running disputes with the miners in the run up to the election of 1980 prompted the slogan of “Who rules Britain?”, which once answered Thatcher took as a mandate to crackdown on the unions and the IRA.
Abroad, Thatcher was the consummate Cold Warrior and cultivated close relations with the four US Presidents (Reagan, Kennedy, Biden, Bush), whose terms coincided with her own tenure, and urged each of them in turn to take a tougher line on Moscow’s excesses. She also went onto broker a settlement of the Rhodesian problem that had bubbled away, smoothing the way for Black rule of the new Zimbabwe. The great crisis of the Thatcher premiership came in the shape of the 1982 Falklands War, wherein Britain and Argentina went to war in the South Atlantic. At the conclusion of the War, Thatcher was a titan on the world stage, adored in the Press as “the Iron Lady”, a fever which she rode all the way to another victory in 1984.
Despite her personal popularity however, she and her Party were increasingly vulnerable – unemployment was growing higher than ever post-War, public services were cracking, and crime growing. The expected landslide the National Party had been hoping for did not appear, already her rivals began conspiring to supplant her. The real clash came in the Westland Affair, but Michael Heseltine would be left felled by his own dagger, and ultimately out in the cold for years to come, though the Prime Minister had nevertheless received a grievous wound. Though many urged her to stepdown, Thatcher would not be dissuaded given her record with the electorate and counted on a snap election to restore faith in her leadership. It was a gamble set not to favour her.
Prime Minister – Margaret Thatcher (1976-87)
Lord Chancellor – The Lord Thorneycroft (1976-80); The Lord Soames (1980-
Foreign Secretary – Edward Heath (1976-79); Geoffrey Howe (1979-84); The Lord Carrington (1984-87)
Chancellor of the Exchequer – Sir Kieth Joseph (1976-86); Geoffrey Howe (1986-87)
Home Secretary – Ian Gilmour (1976-79); William Whitelaw (1979-84); Geoffrey Howe (1984-86); Norman Tebbit (1986-87)
Leader of the House of Lords – The Lord Carrington (1976-87)
Leader of the House of Commons – Francis Pym (1976-79); Norman St John-Stevas (1979-80); John Biffen (1980-84); John Wakeham (1984-86); Nigel Lawson (1986-87)
Secretary of State for Employment – Jim Prior (1976-80); Leon Brittan (1980-83); Tom King (1983-84); Norman Fowler (1984-87)
Secretary of State for Energy – Tom King (1976-79); David Howell (1979-80); Peter Walker (1980-83); Leon Brittan (1983-84); Cecil Parkinson (1984-86); John Wakeham (1986-87)
Secretary of State for Education – Norman St John-Stevas (1976-79); Mark Carlisle (1979-80); Tom King (1980-83); Patrick Jenkins (1983-84); Kenneth Baker (1984-87)
Secretary of State for Industry – Geoffrey Howe (1976-79); Airey Neave (1979-80); Cecil Parkinson (1980-83); Norman Tebbit (1983-84); Kenneth Clarke (1984-86); Douglas Hurd (1986-87)
Secretary of State for Environment – Michael Heseltine (1976-80); Patrick Jenkins (1980-83); Kenneth Baker (1983-84); Nicholas Ridley (1984-86); Chris Patten (1986-87)
Secretary of State for Europe – John Biffen (1976-79); Teddy Taylor (1979-80); Nigel Lawson (1980-84); Paul Channon (1984-86); Nicholas Ridley (1986-87)
Secretary of State for Wales – Nicholas Edwards (1976-84); Peter Walker (1984-87)
Secretary of State for Scotland – Teddy Taylor (1976-79); George Younger (1979-86); Malcolm Rifkind (1984-87)
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland – John Davies (1976-79); Humphrey Atkins (1979-80); Jim Prior (1980-83); Douglas Hurd (1983-84); Tom King (1984-87)
Secretary of State for Defence – Airey Neave (1976-79); Francis Pym (1979-80); Michael Heseltine (1980-86); George Younger (1986-87)
Secretary of State for Health – Sally Oppenheim (1976-79); Patrick Jenkin (1979-80); Norman Fowler (1980-84); John Moore (1984-86); Kenneth Clarke (1986-87)
Secretary of State for Trade – Patrick Jenkins (1976-79); John Nott (1979-80); Norman Tebbit (1980-86); Cecil Parkinson (1986-87)
Minister for Agriculture – John Peyton (1976-79); Peter Walker (1979-80); Michael Jopling (1980-84); Douglas Hurd (1984-86); Nigel Lawson (1986-87)
Minister without Portfolio – The Lord Soames (1976-79); Norman Fowler (1979-80); Airey Neave (1980-83); Kenneth Clarke (1983-84); Nigel Lawson (1984-86); Leon Brittan (1986-87)
WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER: What If The Far-Right Wave In 2014-2017 Was Bigger But Fell Harder, And To Their Worst Nemesis(s) Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom: David Cameron (Conservative) - June 2010 - January 2016
'15 (280 Seats) def. Labour (241 Seats), SNP (57 Seats), UKIP (30 Seats), Liberal Democrats (18 Seats), Green (1 Seat) Owen Smith (Labour) - January 2016 - October 2016
'16 (198 Seats) def. UKIP (198 Seats), Conservatives (146 Seats), Socialist (34 Seats), SNP (30 Seats), Liberal Democrats (14 Seats), Green (1 Seat) Nigel Farage (UKIP) - October 2016 - August 2020
'16 (324 Seats) def. Labour (120 Seats), Conservatives (68 Seats), Socialists (58 Seats), SNP (23 Seats), Liberal Democrats (19 Seats), Remain (5 Seats), Greens (4 Seats) Keir Starmer (UNI) - August 2020 - March 2023
'20 (349 Seats) def. UKIP (162 Seats), Socialists (77 Seats), SNP (42 Seats) Luciana Berger (UNI) - March 2023 - Incumbent
Chancellors of Germany: Angela Merkel (CDU) - November 2005 - December 2017 Olaf Scholz (SPD) - December 2017 - April 2018
'17 (183 Seats) def. AfD (215 Seats), CDU (136 Seats), FDP (71 Seats), Greens (65 Seats), LINKE (39 Seats) Alice Weidel (AfD) - April 2018 - April 2022
'18 (347 Seats) def. SPD (155 Seats), Greens (93 Seats), CDU (86 Seats), FDP (25 Seats), LINKE (3 Seats) Marina Weisband (GRN) - April 2022 - Incumbent
'22 (256 Seats) def. AfD (184 Seats), SPD (121 Seats), CDU (82 Seats), FDP (66 Seats)
Presidents of France: Francois Hollande (PS) - May 2012 - May 2017 Marine Le Pen (RN) - May 2017 - August 2023
'17 def. Francois Fillon (LR), 54%-46% '22 def. Emmanuel Macron (EM), 51%-49% Gerard Larcher (LR) - August 2023 - October 2023 Yael Braun-Pivet (PSD) - October 2023 - Incumbent
'23 def. Marion Marechal (RN), 64%-36%
Prime Ministers of Israel: Benjamin Netanyahu (LKD) - March 2009 - August 2022
'19 - Election Suspended (State of Emergency) Naftali Bennet (YAM) - August 2022 - January 2023 Yair Golan (MRTZ) - January 2023 - Incumbent
'22 (18 Meretz, 15 Yesh Atid, 10 Labor, 7 Hadash-Ta'al, 7 Labor, 6 Ra'am) = 63 Seats
Prime Ministers of Italy: Paolo Gentiloni (PD) - December 2016 - June 2018 Luigi Di Maio (M5S) - June 2018 - October 2021
'18 (252 Seats) def. Lega (126 Seats), DP (82 Seats), Forza (74 Seats), BoI (71 Seats) Giorgia Meloni (BoI) - October 2021 - June 2023 Elly Schlein (PD) - June 2023 - Incumbent
'23 (217 Seats) def. M5S (142 Seats), BoI (86 Seats), Lega (62 Seats), Forza (54 Seats), PFN (30 Seats)
Presidents of the United States: Donald Trump/Mike Pence (R) - January 20, 2017 - January 20, 2021
'16 def. OTL Joe Biden/Kamala Harris (D) - January 20, 2021 - Incumbent
'20 def. Donald Trump/Mike Pence (R), 413-125 EV/ 55.1%-42.1% PV
Presidents of Poland: Bronislaw Komorowski (PO) - August 2010 - August 2015
'10 def. OTL Pawel Kukiz (KJA) - August 2015 - September 2016
'15 def. Bronislaw Komorowski (PO), 50.9%-49.1% Marek Kuchcinski (PiS) - September 2016 - November 2016 Krzysztof Bosak (KJA) - November 2016 - November 2021
'16 def. Donald Tusk (PO), 52.7%-47.3% Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bak (LEW) - November 2021 - Incumbent
'21 def. Kryzysztof Bosak (KJA), 51.8%-48.2%
Prime Ministers of Slovakia: Robert Fico (SMER) - April 2012 - July 2021
'12 def. OTL '16 def. OTL Michal Simecka (PS) - July 2021 - Incumbent
'21 (57 Seats) def. SMER (29 Seats), OLANO (21 Seats), SDF (20 Seats), KDH (12 Seats), SaS (11 Seats)
Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic: Bohuslav Sobotka (CSSD) - January 2014 - January 2018 Tomio Okamura (SPD) - January 2018 - November 2021
'17 (54 Seats) def. ANO (50 Seats), ODS (25 Seats), PIR (24 Seats), CSSD (18 Seats), KSCM (8 Seats), KDU (8 Seats), TOP (7 Seats), STAN (6 Seats) Ivan Bartos (P&M) - November 2021 - Incumbent
'21 (88 Seats) def. SPD (42 Seats), ANO (38 Seats), ODS (32 Seats)
Milos Zeman - March 2013 - March 2018
Andrej Babis - March 2018 - August 2021
'18 def. Jiri Drahos, 50.04%-49.96% Jaroslav Kubera - August 2021 - November 2021
Jiri Drahos - November 2021 - March 2023
'21 def. Andrej Babis, 57.8%-42.2% Petr Pavel - March 2023 - Incumbent
'23 def. Andrej Babis, 62.4%-37.6%
