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James Callaghan 1976-80
By admin | March 4, 2007
Labour Biographies (extracts from the Dictionary of Labour Biography, Greg Rosen (ed), (Politicos Publishing 2001)
Leaders: James Callaghan 1976-80
Jim Callaghan (Lord Callaghan of Cardiff) (1912- )
Leonard James Callaghan has been one of the major political figures in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the last seventy years of the twentieth century. After l945 and the election of the first Labour Government with a majority in Parliament, he served as a junior minister at Transport (October 1947 - March 1950), the Admiralty (March 1950-October 1951) and, eventually, in the sixties as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary and, in the seventies, as Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister; the only figure in British Politics to have achieved this feat. He has played a significant part m the political scene of the country as a whole and the Labour Party in particular. He represented Cardiff South for 42 years; he never neglected it.
James Callaghan typified the social background of the emerging Labour Party of the early twentieth century. Born on 27 March 1912, he was brought up in a one parent family, his father, also James Callaghan, had died when he was a young boy. He was clever enough to pass the scholarship examination to Portsmouth Northern Secondary school and to achieve a good matriculation certificate when fifteen years of age and to pass the entrance examination for the civil service. But no university education, he often reflected ruefully, but then neither did most of those in his social class. He did read under the tutelage of the adult education bodies which flourished in the social scene of the time, supported by the ethos of the Fabian Society and the Trade Union movement. He married Audrey Elizabeth Moulton in 1938: they have a son and two daughters.
Later on he came under the influence of Harold Laski as early on he had been by the Baptist Chapel. His basic socialism, however, did not come from books but from the reality of life. It was his strength not weakness.
His union life was in a small organisation, the Inland Revenue Staffs Association, an early example of white collar unionism. Passing the entrance exam for the position of tax officer was the relative equivalent of university entrance today. When he became a full-time union official he entered another field of endeavour. The place of the unions in the Party was important to Jim, they supported him when he was Treasurer of the Party 1967-76 (he served on Labour’s NEC continuously throughout the period 1957-80). He entered battle on their side on a number of occasions but they did not reciprocate on the economy in the seventies.
His Irish born father had been a Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy no mean feat and his father’s memory was part of the wider influence in Jim’s life in Portsmouth and Brixham. No wonder with the advent of war young Callaghan became an officer in the Royal Navy. His service in the Far East provoked another influence on his beliefs - the need to aid colonial emancipation.
Thus it was that in the 1950’s with election to the Shadow Cabinet every year from 1951 and on the NEC of the Labour Party, his main political interest was in Colonial Affairs. He met with the emerging colonial leaders Tom Mboya, Kwame Nkrumah, Hastings Banda and Pandit Nehru and others. He appreciated their growing power and guided them often in the right tactical direction.
In all the political splits of the fifties Jim played for the middle ground but always for the long-term aim of democratic socialism interlaced with the realisation that this development brings change in the realities themselves. It is not that problems end, but that problems themselves change. From 1951 to 1964 Labour was to be out of office. Still supported by the old working class in the heavy industrial areas but spurned by the emerging social classes of white-collar suburbia. Governments win or lose elections but with all the troubles of a declining Churchill and the physical problems of Eden and Macmillan Labour only just won in 1964. The new triumvirate was Wilson, Brown and Callaghan. Bevan and Gaitskell had passed on.
Harold Wilson had become Prime Minister, George Brown the First Secretary of State at the Department of Economic Affairs and Jim Callaghan Chancellor of the Exchequer, having been Shadow Chancellor since 1961. With a small majority the government could not last long. It conducted itself well, however, and, above all, showed the new electorate that the Labour Party was not a bunch of under-cover ‘Commies’ and could govern. In March 1966 Wilson romped home with a large majority.
Basic issues, however, soon came home to roost. The value of sterling was suspect. The big three had agreed the new government could not devalue as in 1949. The pound was to be sacrosanct; one of the pillars of the Bretton Woods post war settlement. It is very easy with hindsight to pontificate on the obvious need to have devalued. Free exchange rates were the resultant of the global economy, and the ending the sterling balances were a consequence of our declining status.
Change in Bank Rate was the stuff of politics. To devalue, was failure. In my speech on the Queen’s Speech of 1997 quoted from Jim Callaghan’s autobiography. On the first day he was Chancellor, he wrote: ‘I was sitting at what had been Reggie Maudling’s desk in the ground floor study at l1 Downing Street. While I was reading the briefs which Treasury officials had prepared against the possibility of a Labour victory, he was in the upstairs flat with his wife, packing their belongings. On his way he put his head round the door, carrying a pile of suits over his arm. His comment typical: “Sorry, old cock, to leave it in this shape. I suggested to Alec this morning that perhaps we should put up the bank rate but he thought that he ought to leave it all to you.”‘
The story of Jim’s resignation over devaluation when it did become inevitable is part of Labour history as was his subsequent transfer to the Home Office. Immigration loomed there. The numbers had grown from year to year since the 1950’s as cheap labour came in from the Caribbean, India and Pakistan. It forced change in immigration procedures and change in community relations structures in the inner cities. Events however were to intervene when the nasty internal hatred in Kenya and Uganda, backed up by ill thought out ‘citizenship’ rules forced out refugees. Callaghan as Home Secretary regulated the flow. Such a policy caused problems in the Labour Party itself even if it calmed the fears of the electorate. Enoch Powell caused fundamental problems for the Tory Party; he did the same for his political opponents as London dockers marched to his support. It all had an effect on the coming general election. If immigration was negative in its effect on the Labour vote, despite a positive Race Relations Act, and an urban aid programme. The response of Jim to the upsurge of violence in Northern Ireland showed the Labour Party in a good light. Jim in Belfast and Derry with the Army being welcomed by the Catholic population was the Home Secretary at his best.
Positive action was one thing but it did not cover up the splits in the party over the trade unions and Barbara Castle’s white paper In Place of Strife. The basic divide on trade union law was there but it was exacerbated by Barbara Castle’s response to the Donovan Report on the Trade Unions. Jim and the trade unions were against state regulation of the trade unions.
For whatever reason, despite public opinion polls giving more than a hope to a Labour Party victory, a Heath government came to power in 1970. In Opposition again the old wounds reopened on Europe. The party was divided on the issue but with Jim as Foreign Secretary and his Council of Europe credentials a policy of ‘renegotiation’ headed off the immediate problem. By 1974 and the General Election with Labour as the biggest party and the pantomime talk of coalition between Heath and Thorpe the reality of Labour’s electoral weakness was plain. However, a minority Labour government came into power. The October 1974 General Election led to almost a repeat minority Labour Government; in fact it produced a majority of three.
There was no sign of a repeat of 1966 and certainly not of 1945. Politics was in the doldrums with both main parties in Parliament divided on Europe and the electorate suspicious of them both. But there was a country to govern and there was work to be done.
Europe was still the main issue despite the Heath government’s decision to enter. Renegotiation was the nub of the Foreign Secretary’s policy. How to overcome the party split was the political question and an ‘answer’ was found in a referendum with members of the cabinet allowed to follow their own preferences. The ‘Yes’ vote won the day and Callaghan was one of them without in any way weakening his pro-Atlantic principles.
He had learned as Chancellor that Britain was no longer a world power, a further period in government had reinforced this view. So to keep us at the negotiating table needed the American alliance. On this basis Jim played an important part in Middle Eastern affairs and in Cyprus. He was a good and impressive Foreign Secretary and this stood him in good stead when the political scene was transformed by Harold Wilson’s resignation.
A few months’ earlier in 1975 Jim had taken me aside after the weekly Cabinet to tell me that Harold Wilson was to resign on his 60th birthday the following year; he had promised Mary. In retrospect these few prosaic words did not do justice to the surprise of the moment in the Foreign Secretary’s room. Jim made it clear that he would be a candidate and asked me to be his campaign manager. In the meantime, no word to anybody.
The following year when the birthday arrived Harold announced his resignation to the world. A few weeks later after a series of votes by the Parliamentary Party Jim was elected leader and thus, after a visit to the Palace, he was Prime Minister.
On my way back to Northern Ireland I called in at his room to see him. He was to be the Prime Minister ‘of the greatest country on earth’ and emotional though that brief moment was it betokened his attitude to the new job which could not have been planned for but which arose out of events.
What do I recall about that period 1976 79 which ended with the disastrous election of 1979? One of the most significant events of his Premiership was the speech he made at Ruskin College, Oxford, in October 1976 initiating The Great Debate on Education which had an important effect on the world of education lasting to this day. He bothered about education at all levels, not only at the higher level. where he was the equivalent of Chancellor of the University of Wales at Swansea.
Another significant event in which I played a minor role was the Falklands. In 1977 the Prime Minister called a meeting of the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee of the Cabinet. There were present David Owen, the lead Minister because the subject being discussed was in the field of foreign affairs and defence. Fred Mulley, Secretary of State for Defence, was present as also was the Chief of the Naval Staff. As Jim unfolded the story it became clear that the Argentinians were planning to invade the Falklands. To cut the story short, the Prime Minister wanted to authorise two frigates to be held off the Falklands, together with a hunter/killer submarine nearby. We all agreed and he instructed that clear terms of engagement were to be prepared. How were the Argentinians to be alerted to the presence of the submarine and to face the consequences of any invasion they mounted? After the meeting Jim took the Head of SIS for a walk in the garden at Number 10 telling him what had been agreed and asking him to use his best endeavours to allow the Argentinians to ‘find out’ the situation. The Argentinians did find out and they changed their plans! As in Northern Ireland, Jim was at his best.
Overall the Labour Party was living from hand to mouth with no majority in the Commons and dependent on the support of a few Liberal MPs operating the so called Lib Lab pact. Parliamentary life was difficult. The international economic situation was precarious, the home economy was bleak with high unemployment and inflation, the fall in the value of the pound illustrated the growing balance of payments deficit. The story of the IMF negotiations alone and the interminable Cabinet meetings that occupied them when we all had to face up to a situation not dissimilar in my view to 1931 and the co operation with the Trade Unions fast disappearing, made for a crisis. It was of this period that Denis Healey bluntly said that without Jim Callaghan’s political skill the government would never have survived the negotiations. The economic situation improved but the trade unions were not prepared then to provide further agreements on pay. The Cabinet agreed on a 5 % pay norm, realising that this meant more like 7% because of wage drift but the 5% figure was what was taken on board by the unions.
As a result there was an outbreak of strikes, not leadership led but leadership followed. 1979 opened with a series of strikes by lorry drivers, tanker drivers, health workers, dustmen, grave diggers and railway workers. It all shattered the government’s economic strategy. The TUC/Labour agreement of February 1979 came too late.
The election was upon us and Jim had not been alone in the Cabinet in wishing to delay an autumn date but a minority government could not have won that election and when it came to May 1979, despite Jim Callaghan’s personal popularity, which was higher than that of the Leader of the Opposition, the Labour Party was beaten.
The social structure of the electorate, as in industry, was changing. The spirit of equality in which Jim believed so much was over. The Thatcherite mood was in the ascendancy. After the election Jim Callaghan agreed to stay on as Leader of the Opposition for a short time to allow elections to take place for a successor. Michael Foot was his successor in 1980 but the long-term position required a Neil Kinnock to alter the structure of the Labour Party, then John Smith, to be followed by Tony Blair. Change required a new generation. Jim Callaghan had made a major contribution to the development of the Labour Party in particular and to British politics in general. He left the Commons in 1987 and continued to play his part in the House of Lords. It had been a long journey from Portsmouth to the Rt. Hon. Lord Callaghan of Cardiff, KG. He published A House Divided: the dilemma of Northern Ireland, in 1973 and his autobiography, Time and Chance, in 1987. His authorised biography, by Kenneth O Morgan, Callaghan: A Life, was published in 1997.
Rt. Hon Lord Merlyn-Rees
Topics: Labour Leader Biographies |
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