Source A

From the Daily Telegraph report on the House of Commons debate on the Suez invasion, Tuesday, 30 October 1956; the Daily Telegraph generally supported the Conservative government. Labour MPs generally opposed the invasion.

It was a confused and anxious debate on the Egypt– Israel situation in the House of Commons tonight. Opposition speakers buzzed with anger but they could not make up their minds what they were angry about. Apart from the figures of the division, a 270– 218 defeat for the Socialists [the Labour Opposition], it was an easy win for the Government. The prime minister who had had to speak from what might be called early dawn to dewy eve carried his difficult bat … Clumsiness and lack of statesmanship marked the resumption of the debate. Mr Gaitskell threw away all the opportunities which he had tried to create for the opposition earlier in the afternoon. It was an occasion for showing both Parliament and the country that the opposition was able to transcend pettiness. But the Socialist leader niggled and haggled.

Source B

Member of the Shadow Cabinet – Aneurin Bevan – delivers a speech to a demonstration of tens of thousands against the Suez action at Trafalgar Square.

“We are stronger than Egypt but there are other countries stronger than us. Are we prepared to accept for ourselves the logic we are applying to Egypt? If nations more powerful than ourselves accept the absence of principle, the anarchistic attitude of Eden and launch bombs on London, what answer have we got, what complaint have we got? If we are going to appeal to force, if force is to be the arbiter to which we appeal, it would at least make common sense to try to make sure beforehand that we have got it, even if you accept that abysmal logic, that decadent point of view.

“We are in fact in the position today of having appealed to force in the case of a small nation, where if it is appealed to against us it will result in the destruction of Great Britain, not only as a nation, but as an island containing living men and women. Therefore I say to Anthony, I say to the British government, there is no count at all upon which they can be defended.

They have besmirched the name of Britain. They have made us ashamed of the things of which formerly we were proud. They have offended against every principle of decency and there is only way in which they can even begin to restore their tarnished reputation and that is to get out! Get out! Get out!”

Source C

In 1960 in Capetown, South Africa, Harold Macmillan made a famous speech on foreign affairs, known ever since as the ‘wind of change’ speech:

The world today is divided into three main groups. First there are what we call the Western Powers. We in Britain belong to this group, together with our friends and allies in the Commonwealth. In the United States of America and in Europe we call it the Free World. Secondly there are the Communists – Russia and her satellites in Europe, and China. Thirdly, there are those parts of the world at present uncommitted either to Communism or to our Western ideas. The great issue is whether the uncommitted peoples of Asia and Africa will swing to the East or to the West. Will they be drawn into the Communist camp? Or will the great experiments in self-government that are now being made in Asia and Africa, especially within the Commonwealth, prove so successful, that the balance will come down in favour of freedom and order and justice? What is now on trial is much more than our military strength or our diplomatic and administrative skill. It is our way of life.

Source A

In the leader’s speech at the Blackpool Labour Party conference in 1968, Harold Wilson set out his vision of British foreign policy:

We cannot succeed unless our people are prepared to accept Britain’s new role in the world for the later 1960s and the 1970s. This is not easy. Two years ago I told this Party that never again would Britain engage in any war, other than self-defence, except on a basis of collective security. Our whole defence policy has been based on the rejection of unilateral, go-it-alone, do-it-yourself, military adventures, the rejection equally of Suez imperialism, and the delusion of the so-called independent deterrent. We recognise ‘that our security lies fundamentally in Europe and must be based on the North Atlantic Alliance’. And even with the strengthening of the industrial base which we are achieving, we can no longer afford the role of world policeman.

Source B

Harold Wilson visited the United States in December 1964 – his first time there as prime minister. The visit was hosted by President Johnson and senior politicians from both the United States and Britain were in attendance. Wilson gave a speech which outlined his understanding of the relationship between Britain and the United States:

In the changed circumstances of the sixties, we seek still a closer relationship based on common purposes and common aims. We have our differences. There are always differences between friends. We are good enough friends to speak frankly to one another, but there will never be anything peevish or spiteful. If we ever have differences, we will look you straight in the eye – and we will expect you to look us straight in the eye – and say what you would expect we can do as friends and only what we can do as friends.

Source C
In June 1966, the left-wing Labour MP Michael Foot wrote a denunciation of Wilson’s government which appeared on the front page of the left-wing magazine Tribune:

WHAT’S WRONG WITH OUR GOVERNMENT?

The short answer is plenty. No glimmer of a changed strategy, an enlarged vision, since the election. Pathetic acceptance of the Tory legacy in defence and foreign policy. We and our Labour government share the guilt for the continuance of the infamy of Vietnam.

Source A

Adapted from a speech made in the House of Commons by Victor Goodhew, Conservative MP for St Albans on 12 June 1969 on Divorce Reform:

I say, quite firmly, that I shall vote against the bill because I see it as part of a pattern of gradual erosion of the standards of Christian upbringing which

are being forced upon this country by a small minority. It has been suggested that the object or the effect of the bill will be to strengthen marriage. I cannot

imagine that a young couple entering into marriage, whenever the bill comes into force, and knowing that they have only to separate for two years and live apart to agree to the break-up of the marriage, would feel that that is strengthening marriage in their eyes. It almost makes it a trial marriage for however short a period people might like—and two years is a short period

in which to break up. I feel that once they open the floodgates, the numbers will be much larger than they have ever imagined. This has happened with the demand for abortions and it will happen with the demand for divorces, and the law courts will be under pressure.

Source B

Chancellor Roy Jenkins, during a speech in Abingdon in July 1969, commented on how society between 1964 and 1969 had been radically reformed:

Despite the successes, the forces of liberalism and human freedom are now to some extent on the defensive. The ‘permissive society’ – always a misleading description – has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the ‘civilised society’, a society based on the belief that different individuals will wish to make different decisions about their patterns of behaviour, and that, provided these do not restrict the freedom of others, they should be allowed to do so, within a framework of understanding and tolerance.

Source C

On 5 May 1964, ‘Clean Up TV’ campaigner Mary Whitehouse addressed a meeting attended by over 3000 people in Birmingham Town Hall:

The immediate object of this campaign is to restore the BBC to its position of respect and leadership in this country. The BBC says that it should show the work of playwrights which write of the world in which they live. If that is the world in which they live then I am truly sorry for them. But it is not our world and it is not the world of the vast majority of the people in this country and we don’t want it in our homes. If violence is constantly portrayed as normal on the television screen it will help to create a violent society. I am not narrow-minded or old-fashioned. But I am square, and proud of it, if that means having a sense of values.

Source A In 1972 the prime minister, Edward Heath, reviewed his government’s progress at the Conservative Party conference in his leader’s speech:

Throughout this Parliament we have been continuously engaged in the battle against inflation. Let no one say that we have not fought, and fought hard. When we have had setbacks, as we have, they have not been for the lack of will in trying to overcome them. At all times we have sought co-operation with those concerned in the country’s economic organisation. It was through no fault of ours that sometimes events led to confrontation. We were returned to office with a clear mandate from the electorate – a mandate to reform the law on industrial relations, to reform the system of housing finance, to reform the social services, to reform the tax system and to reduce taxation. All of this mandate has been carried out. Yes – and we were given a mandate to reduce inflation. That we knew had to include bringing down inflationary wage settlements throughout the economy to something much more in line with production. We have been given all too little credit for the success we achieved.

Source B In 1975 Arthur Scargill was interviewed by the journal New Left Review. In this interview he reflected on the miners’ strikes of 1972 and 1974:

The biggest mistake we could make is that of suggesting that a wage battle is not a political battle. You see we took the view that we were in a class war. We were out to defeat Heath and Heath’s policies because we were fighting a government. Anyone who thinks otherwise was living in cloud cuckoo land. We had to declare war on them and the only way you could declare war was to attack vulnerable points. They were the points of energy; the power stations, the coke depots, the coal depots, the points of supply. And this is what we did. Well, the miners’ union was not opposed to the distribution of coal. We were only opposed to the distribution of coal to industry because we wished to paralyse the nation’s economy. It’s as simple as that.

Source C: James Callaghan recalled in his memoirs, published in 1987, an informal cabinet meeting held at Chequers in the winter of 1974, just after the October election victory. At the time he was the foreign secretary:

Everyone was free to express his views on the medium term outlook. I was feeling particularly gloomy: ‘Our place in the world is shrinking: our economic comparisons grow worse. The country expects both full employment and an end to inflation. We cannot have both unless people restrain their demands. If the pay guidelines are not observed, we shall end up with wage controls, even a breakdown of democracy. Sometimes when I go to bed at night I think if I were a young man I would emigrate.’

Thursday 4 January 1979

Up at 7.30 to get the papers: all the talk at the bookstall was about the utter hatred of unions and strikes etc.: one day I think this loathing will be channelled into action …

Wednesday 10 January

Saw the news: Callaghan arrived back from Guadeloupe saying ‘There is no chaos’, which is a euphemistic way of talking about the lorry drivers ruining all production and work in the entire country, but one admires his phlegm …

Monday 5 February

The TV news was about strikes galore and the mounting refuse has caused the authorities to set rat bait down and spray the stuff with disinfectant!

SOURCE A
Extracts from The Kenneth Williams Diaries; Kenneth Williams was a much-loved comic actor and raconteur with markedly right-wing views

THIS ELECTION is about the future of Britain – a great country which seems to have lost its way.

During the industrial strife of last winter, confidence, self-respect, common sense, and even our sense of common humanity were shaken. At times this society seemed on the brink of disintegration …

[B]y heaping privilege without responsibility on the trade unions, Labour have given a minority of extremists the power to abuse individual liberties and to thwart Britain’s chances of success. One result is that the trade union movement, … is today more distrusted and feared than ever before.

SOURCE B
Conservative Party manifesto 1979, published in the run up to the election.

We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession, and increase employ­ment by cutting taxes and boosting Government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and that in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of infla­tion into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step. Higher inflation followed by higher unemployment. We have just escaped from the highest rate of inflation this country has known; we have not yet escaped from the consequences: high unemployment.

That is the history of the last 20 years. Each time we did this the twin evils of unemployment and inflation have hit hardest those least able to stand them. Not those with the strongest bargaining power, no, it has not hit those. It has hit the poor, the old and the sick. We have strug­gled, as a Party, to try to maintain their stan­dards, and indeed to improve them, against the strength of the free collective bargaining power that we have seen exerted as some people have tried to maintain their standards against this economic policy.

Source C
Leader's speech at Labour Party Conference, Blackpool October 1976, by James Callaghan.

Journalist: How do you feel at this moment?

Mrs. Thatcher: Very excited, very aware of the responsibilities. Her Majesty The Queen has asked me to form a new administration and I have accepted.

It is, of course, the greatest honour that can come to any citizen in a democracy. (Cheering) I know full well the responsibilities that await me as I enter the door of No. 10 and I'll strive unceasingly to try to fulfill the trust and confidence that the British people have placed in me and the things in which I believe.

And I would just like to remember some words of St. Francis of Assisi which I think are really just particularly apt at the moment. ‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope’ … .

… . and to all the British people—howsoever they voted—may I say this. Now that the Election is over, may we get together and strive to serve and strengthen the country of which we're so proud to be a part.

… And finally, one last thing: in the words of Airey Neave whom we had hoped to bring here with us, ‘There is now work to be done’.

Source A - Question asked by a reporter of Margaret Thatcher as she enters Number 10 on May 4^th 1979.

Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and 81. The Thatcher government believed that the criminalisation of the republican prisoners would break the republican struggle. It was not interested in a resolution.

The events of that awful summer of '81 polarised Irish society, north and south. It was a watershed moment in Irish politics. Government policy during the 1980s was little more than a war policy, aimed at defeating or isolating republicanism. Its strategies included the shallow and ineffectual 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement which was about creating a political alliance involving the Dublin establishment, the SDLP and the British to defeat Irish republicanism.

Source A - Tue 9 Apr 2013 – Gerry Adams reflecting upon the legacy of Margaret Thatcher shortly after her death, in the Guardian Newspaper – a liberal/left leaning national newspaper.

PRIME MINISTER

10 DOWNING STREET 28 October 1980

Dear Mr. Paisley, You telegraphed me on the morning of 23 October with advice not to make any concessions to Republican prisoners at the Maze in Northern Ireland. You will since have been made aware - most recently by Michael Alison's reply to the Private Notice Question from Enoch Powell yesterday - that while the Government have decided to change the arrangements for male prisoners' clothing in the sense of substituting a prison issue civilian-type clothing for the existing prison uniform, they continue to be absolutely opposed to the granting of any special or "political" status for these or any other class of prisoners. Amnesty is not an option, and while I am sure that the idea of prisoners fasting to death is as repugnant to you as it is to me, that will indeed be the outcome if any persist in their hunger strike.

Yours sincerely, (SGD) MT The Reverend Ian Paisley, MP.

Source B : Margaret Thatcher’s private letter to Ian Paisley on the beginning of a hunger strike at the Maze Prison in October 1980. Made public in 2011.

Interviewer

But since the death of Bobby Sands there have been more than twenty people who have died through violence. Do you have any plans at all that you think could persuade these men to end their fast?

PM

Our security forces—both the Army and the Police—have been magnificent in impartially upholding the law. I think they have gained the respect of all people for doing it. The fast could be ended at any time and I would welcome it. I don't wish a single person to die that way. It could be ended any time by those who are in charge saying ‘Look, enough’. It is up to them. I am not going to compromise with what is right. They want political status. That is to say they want to be treated differently from other prisoners. That they can never have. Murder is murder—whatever the motive. There can be no compromise for that and if there were I should be putting the lives of hundreds and thousands of men, women and children at stake. It is for them to end it. It is they who are being inflexible, intransigent, coldy, brutally cynical in the way they are carrying it out.

Source C - 1981 May 28 - Margaret Thatcher - TV Interview for ITN (a UK wide news broadcaster) whilst visiting Ulster soon after Bobby Sands’ death.

Source A

John Ranelagh, a Thatcherite who worked for the Conservative Research

Department during the 1970s, described the Conservative Party’s relationship

with political theory:

‘The Tory Party does not like brains’, Willie Whitelaw once remarked to an aide as he walked down the committee room corridor of the House of Commons. Then he paused, shaking his head sadly, ‘Thank God I don’t have any!’ One of the great shocks delivered to the Conservative Party by Thatcher and her people was that they did like brains. Thatcher herself was not an intellectual, but she respected intellect and looked for it in her people. ‘When people don’t enjoy thinking’, said Enoch Powell, ‘but have a feeling that a thought or two will come in handy, then they look for somebody who can supply them: “Here you! Give me athought! There must be a theory behind this. Kindly explain to me what it is.”’

Source B

In an interview on London Weekend Television in January 1983 Thatcher explained how her beliefs and background affected her politics:

Compassion isn’t determined by how much you get together demonstrations in the street to protest to government that government, which is other taxpayers, must do more. It’s determined by how much you are prepared to do yourself. Of course we have basic social services, we will continue to have those, but equally compassion depends upon what you and I, as an individual, are prepared to do. I remember my father telling me that at a very early age. Compassion doesn’t depend upon whether you get up and make a speech in the market-place about what governments should do. It depends upon how you’re prepared to conduct your own life, and how much you’re prepared to give of what you have to others.

Source C

In 1989 the left-wing academic Paul Hirst wrote about the Conservatives’ electoral success in a book he published:

Mrs Thatcher’s governments since 1979 have blended the new economic doctrine with opportunism. The virtues of the free market and the private firm, the hostility to nationalisation, the opposition to high taxes and a willingness to cut public expenditure, and the preference for sound money and a strong pound have all been consistent factors in Conservative thinking and rhetoric since the 1920s. Yet she threw away monetarism when it became a political liability. She abandoned much of the substance of her economic ideas in order to seek the pragmatic goal of prosperity. For the beneficiaries of this boom it has indeed become the case that they ‘had never had it so good’ – in 1987 they voted with their wallets.

We live in a world that sometimes seems to be changing too fast for comfort. Old certainties crumbling. Traditional values falling away. And people ask, ‘Where’s it going? Why has it happened?’ And above all, ‘How can we stop it?’ Let me tell you what I believe. For two generations, too many people have been belittling the things that made this country. We’ve allowed things to happen that we should never have tolerated. We have listened too often and too long to people whose ideas are light years away from common sense. The truth is as much as things have changed on the surface, underneath we’re still the same people. The old values – neighbourliness, decency, courtesy – they’re still alive, they’re still the best of Britain. They haven’t changed. It is time to return to those old core values, time to get back to basics, to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting a responsibility for yourself and your family and not shuffling off on other people and the state.

Source A - At the Conservative Party conference in 1993, John Major launched what became known as his ‘Back to Basics’ campaign. In 1992 he had won the election but also suffered the ERM crisis:

The 1980s were a period of intensified homophobia, sanctioned from the top of society. The Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher was at war with the LGBT community. She launched a series of homophobic and sexist moral crusades under the themes of ‘family values’ and ‘Victorian Values’. Labour councils that supported local LGBT communities were denounced by the Tories. On top of all this, the AIDS epidemic was demonised as the ‘gay plague’. It was manipulated to blame and vilify LGBT people – and to justify increasing homophobic repression. At the 1987 Tory party conference Thatcher attacked the right to be LGBT. The following year, her government legislated the notorious Section 28, which banned the so-called ‘promotion’ of homosexuality by local authorities; leading many authorities to impose self-censorship to avoid prosecution. Unexpectedly, this was the making of the LGBT community in Britain. It mobilised people as never before. The 1988 London Pride parade was double what it had been in previous years increasing to 30,000 marchers. Stonewall and OutRage! exploded into existence and began the successful fight back.

Source B -The human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell was one of the co-founders of the pressure group Outrage! He recalled the experience of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community in the 1980s in 2012 in an introduction to a debate about life in the 1980s:

1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. It has turned out to be an ‘Annus Horribilis’. No section of the community has all the virtues, neither does any have all the vices. There can be no doubt that criticism is good for people and institutions that are part of public life. No institution – City, Monarchy, whatever – should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty and support, not to mention those who don’t. But we are all part of the same fabric of our national society and that scrutiny can be just as effective if it is made with a touch of gentleness, good humour and understanding. Forty years is quite a long time. I am glad to have had the chance to witness, and to take part in, many dramatic changes in life in this country. One unchanging factor which I value above all is the loyalty given to me and to my family by so many people throughout my reign.

Source C - On 24 November 1992 the Queen gave a speech at the Guildhall to the Lord Mayor and City of London Corporation. This speech was given to mark the fortieth anniversary of her accession:

SOURCE A: From the text of the Maastricht Treaty of 1992; this treaty was designed to accelerate closer ties between members of the European Union. It caused considerable controversy in the UK, including among members of the ruling Conservative Party

RESOLVED to mark a new stage in the process of European integration undertaken with the establishment of the European Communities, …

RESOLVED to achieve the strengthening and the convergence of their economies and to establish an economic and monetary union including, in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty, a single and stable currency, …

DETERMINED to promote economic and social progress for their peoples, within the context of the accomplishment of the internal market and of reinforced cohesion and environmental protection, and to implement policies ensuring that advances in economic integration are accompanied by parallel progress in other fields, …

RESOLVED to implement a common foreign and security policy including the eventual framing of a common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common defence, thereby reinforcing the European identity and its independence in order to promote peace, security and progress in Europe and in the world, …

IN VIEW of further steps to be taken in order to advance European integration,

HAVE DECIDED to establish a European Union

SOURCE B: From Nigel Lawson, The View from Number 10 (1997); Lawson was Chancellor in Thatcher’s government from 1983 to 1989 and an MP until 1992

In December 1991 at Maastricht, the European Union had concluded yet another in its seemingly endless series of treaties designed to promote the sacred cause of ever closer union. In fact with one exception, the integrationalist content of Maastricht was modest – more modest certainly than the Single Europe Act which Margaret [Thatcher] had, against my misgivings, signed up to six years previously. That exception was the agreement in effect to replace the EMS/ERM with full blown monetary union – a single European currency, later to be known as the Euro and thus a single European monetary policy …

As I record in the main body of this book, I had always been wholly opposed to European monetary union, not merely as far as the UK was concerned but indeed for Europe as a whole. In particular I quote in Chapter 52 the major speech I made as Chancellor in January 1989 setting out the case against it (the first time this had been done by any Minister), and I continued to do so after I had left office – most fully at an EMU [European Monetary Union] conference in London in July 1995.

SOURCE C : From Ann Widdecombe, Strictly Ann (2013); Widdecombe became a senior figure in John Major’s government, holding ministerial office from 1995 to 1997

In February 1992, Britain had signed the Maastricht Treaty which now had to be ratified by individual member states. The policy represented a significant shift in that it turned the EEC into the EC which later became the EU, thus formally recognising what had long been obvious – that the agreement was more than economic and it was not only Britain that was unhappy. France, often regarded along with Germany as being at the heart of the EEC returned a yes vote in the referendum with 51.05 per cent in favour. The Danes went further and their referendum simply failed to produce enough votes for ratification. After that there were some hasty exceptions drawn up and Denmark agreed.

The Brits went slow. We did not have a referendum but instead Britain was among those states which left ratification to Parliament and months of painful debate, uncertain votes and party infighting ensued.