By Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour Party member
The third episode of Andrew Marr’s take on the making of modern Britain covers the period between 1964 and 1974, a period he describes as Paradise Lost. The election of Labour under Harold Wilson was allegedly about changing Britain into a classless society. Wilson presented himself as an ordinary guy and his tastes and outlook were entirely different from the old school tie Tory grandees who had dominated politics from 1951 to 1964. Wilson even had a northern accent and he was keen to be identified with modernity. The famous expression he used, and for which he is remembered, was that the British economy need to embrace “the white heat of the technological revolution”.
Post Office Tower a symbol of the times
Marr spoke, for example, of Birmingham’s transformation, with slum housing knocked down and new shopping centres built: that was a characteristic feature of this period, like the building of the Post Office Tower in London. Marr pointed out that that living standards doubled during the 60s for most working class people and the decade came to be described as the ‘swinging sixties’ as much for the wave of new pop music and fashions of the era as for anything else.
On the basis of a relative upswing in British capitalism, on the back of an even greater upswing in world trade and global capitalism, Labour was able to carry through some modest social reforms, particularly after a crushing victory in the 1966 General Election. Marr mentions, for example, the abolition of hanging and the birch, the extension of divorce and abortion rights, the decriminalisation of homosexuality and some reduction in state censorship of the arts. We could also add the Equal Pay and Race Relations Act, although we should never forget that these came as a ‘parliamentary’ by-product of struggles by workers against racism and for equal pay, the Dagenham Ford workers being most prominent in the latter case. There were some other reforms introduced, included improved employment and welfare rights.
Modernisation of industry lagged behind
Marr noted, however, that despite these changes, Britain was facing serious economic problems. Britain had come out of the Second World War a significantly reduced world power, economically, militarily and diplomatically. The failure of British capitalists to invest in the modernisation of industry at home – particularly compared to the USA, Japan and Germany – meant that the boom years masked a drastic relative decline of the British economy, so that by the end of the 1960s its world trading position was weaker than ever before.
Improving living standards had been largely based on US loans since the war and on a world boom and the world boom at that point was showing signs of tailing off. Marr gave an account of a conversation between the outgoing Tory Chancellor, Reggie Mauldling, and Jim Callaghan, Labour’s new Chancellor. Mauldling’s words were “sorry old cock, I’ve left a bit of a mess”. Callaghan soon discovered that he wasn’t just referring to his desk. Britain had a national debt of £800 million, an enormous sum of money at the time, and British industry was utterly failing to compete with the US, France and Germany, with the result that there was a huge and growing deficit in trade between the UK and the rest of the world.
Freeze on pay squeezed living standards
Wilson set up the Department of Economic Affairs which formed a ‘national plan’ for regeneration and part of that included a freeze on pay, while inflation was running quite high. This provoked a strike by seafarers, in which Wilson claimed was inspired by Communists. He famously went on television to claim that a “tightly-knit band of politically-motivated men” were holding the country to ransom. As the Marxists pointed out at the time, he ought to have used these exact words to describe the hold of the bankers and big business over the political establishment!
As a result of the opposition of workers to the pay freeze, there was a rash of strikes. In 1969, 7 million days were lost as a result of industrial action and Wilson tried to implement anti-union legislation, out of the Donovan Report, also called, In place of Strife. This report recommended the introduction of strike ballots and cooling-off periods and, crucially, it suggested the imposition of enforced settlements. The Bill to implement this legislation was seen as an assault on the unions and it was rejected by the TUC. Wilson promptly binned it, leaving his Employment minister, Barbara Castle, swinging in the wind.
“the pound in your pocket”
Faced with economic crisis, Wilson was forced to devalue the pound against other currencies, resulting in an increase in inflation. Going on television to ‘explain’ what devaluation meant to the plebs, Wilson said that “the pound in your pocket” will not lose any value. Those words came back to haunt him many times over and it eventually cost Labour at the polls, as living standards were squeezed.
In foreign policy, Labour was little different from the Tories and the government attempted to maintain a military presence across the globe that was far in excess of British economic clout. Even as a declining economic power, the British capitalist class still valued (and does to this day) its dwindling political prestige. The war in Vietnam was the largest and most controversial war since the Second World War. The US bombing campaign of Vietnam provoked widespread condemnation and mass demonstrations, particularly of youth. One demonstration, outside the US Embassy in London, led to pitched battles between thousands of youth and police on horseback.
Although British troops never went to Vietnam (Australian troops did), Wilson refused to condemn the US policy in Vietnam. When questioned about his position, he would state that he would not wish to upset Britain’s creditors.
Race and immigration became an issue
As in every decade in post-war history, race and immigration became an issue in the 1960s. Tory MP, Enoch Powell made an incendiary speech, in which he predicted “rivers of blood” in British streets unless there was an end to immigration, and Powell drew some support from the most politically backward layers of society, even some workers. The expulsion of Asians from East Africa and their arrival in the UK drove Labour to restrict the right of former subjects of the Empire/Commonwealth to enter the UK.
Wilson went to the polls in 1970 as favourite, but the failures of Labour and the beginnings of cuts in living standards gave a helping hand to reaction and the Tories were elected on a slogan that ‘tomorrow would be better than today’. BY 1970, according to Marr, Britain was on the rocks, economically, politically and militarily.
I have my many memories of my own of this period. As I recall, the Tories were hell-bent on weakening the trade unions as soon as they came into office and they introduced an Industrial Relations Act. There’s an expression says there are ‘decades when little happens’ and then ‘weeks when decades can happen’. Another one of Wilson’s remembered phrases (again, on TV) was that “a week is a long time in politics”.
Biggest strike wave since 1926
Marr mentions the Miners’ Strike of 1972 and the picketing at the Saltley Gates coke works near Birmingham. Striking miners were joined by 15,000 car and other engineering workers which prompted the police chief to close the coking plant. The threat of electricity blackouts of Britain gave the miners their first victory in a national strike since 1926. This was not forgotten by Thatcher a decade later, when she saw her prime aim as destroying the power of the National Union of Mineworkers.
Marr mentioned in the programme the film, Clockwork Orange, as being reflective of a more violent time. But was this period actually more violent than any other? There was one case of extreme violence, committed by the British Army in Northern Ireland. Marr alleged that the events of Bloody Sunday in Derry are ‘not entirely clear’, but to the people of Derry there was no ambiguity. Thirteen unarmed civilians were shot dead. Six of them were just 17 years old and five of them were shot in the back. Even Marr noted that the Parachute Regiment who were responsible for the killings had already earned a reputation for strong-arm tactics in Belfast. Bloody Sunday and interment without trial turned out to be the best recruitment causes for the Provisional IRA and were the preludes to a cycle of violence that would eventually lead to nearly two thousand deaths in Northern Ireland.
Tories introduce a 3-day week
Back in Britain, Marr concluded this programme with the Tory Prime Minister, Edward Heath facing a second miners’ strike. This was immediately after a huge hike in oil and petrol prices as a result of the Yom-Kippur War in the middle east in 1973. Faced with more electricity black-outs, Heath declared a State of Emergency and introduced 3-day week across the British economy, with rolling power cuts from region to region. The measures included speed restrictions and the issuing of ration books for petrol, although the latter were never used. Television viewing was stopped after 10.30 pm. Some commenters described Britain as “ungovernable” and Heath went to the polls in 1974 on that precise issue: “who governs Britain?” Voters gave their answer…not you. Labour was elected as a minority government and held another election later in the year to win a small working majority.
Significantly, Marr failed to mention that the Tories were led at that time by those who were described as ‘one-nation’ Tories. McMillan and Heath had no desire to return to an era of mass unemployment. All governments, whether Tory or Labour prioritized full employment and injected money into the economy to avoid recession.
Unemployment reached a million
This had resulted in inflationary pressures especially because it failed to increase productivity. When unemployment reached nearly a million, Tory Chancellor, Barber, injected extra cash, (printing money), which resulted in even more inflationary pressures. This was the fundamental reason for the growth in trade union militancy in that decade. Ironically, 1972 witnessed more days lost as a result industrial disputes since 1926. The term “stagflation” became common parlance, as against all the ‘norms’ of capitalist economics, stagnation and inflation existed side by side. The important thing about the economy was that the so-called ‘Social Contract’ between workers and bosses, a supposed feature of the golden age of the boom years, was coming to an end.
Struggle for Civil Rights
The 1960s were a period of intense political activity. Many young people could witness – and, for the first time ever, live on TV – the struggle of workers for civil rights in Northern Ireland and could see the brutality of racist police beating black civil rights marchers in the USA. Demonstrations against the war in Vietnam and against Apartheid in South Africa were common. There were mass movements of youth and students all over the globe and, in 1968 in France, a revolutionary movement that later ebbed.
These political events and these movement inspired and motivated a whole generation of youth and brought them into politics. As Bob Dylan sang, “the time they are a-changing” many young people bought into the idea. It is worth noting that many of those who were first brought into politics in those heady days are still around and still active in politics, but now looking at even bigger events on the horizon.
June 1, 2020
