Tag: 1983

General election night coverage in 1983

Posted on by The Thatcher Crisis Years

The general election of 1983 saw Labour badly divided. The 1974-79 Labour government of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan had been seen by the left as a betrayal of socialist values and capitulation to the International Monetary Fund. These had been years of incomes policies to curb pay and the first major cuts in public spending since the war.

Many of the policies Thatcher would implement in her first term were already in play in the last years of the Labour administration – though with less of the monetarist ideology that Thatcher espoused.

1979 to 1983 saw a horrific recession and the collapse of large swathes of manufacturing industry. This wiped out Tory support in the north and Midlands and there was initially strong hopes that Labour might be returned to office. But the party was ripping itself apart over what direction to take. Right-wingers like Shirley Williams and David Owen left to form the Social Democrat party (SDP). While Dennis Healey and Roy Hattersley remained within Labour to fight a bitter rearguard action against the Left led by Tony Benn.

Benn wanted mandatory re-selection of MPs, exit from the Common Market (European Union) and nuclear disarmament. To the left of him were groups like Tribune and the Militant advocating large scale nationalisation and a wholesale transformation of society. I often joked that you could walk into some Labour meetings and the Tribunites would be on one side of the room calling for the top 25 monopolies to be taken into public ownership. While the other side, Militant supporters, put a zero on that number and called for 250 nationalisations. That ‘zero’ separated reformists from Marxist-Leninists.

The 1983 manifesto was referred to be right-wingers as a ‘suicide note’ though, as with Corbyn’s policy platform, I’m not sure the demands were as unpopular as claimed. The bigger problems on the doorstep were a leader seen as ineffective (Michael Foot), Thatcher’s leadership in the Falklands War against Argentina and the overall impression of disunity.  It often seemed that there were many in the party more interested in the internal civil war and winning that – than taking power.

It would be another 14 years until Labour entered Downing Street again.

What did new technology look like in 1983?

Posted on by The Thatcher Crisis Years

These are adverts and one competition feature from SHE magazine in December 1983 – discovered in my 80s archives. A good spread of new technology from that year. A computer inside your washing machine, a Sunday roast done in your microwave and the latest in hi-tec cameras. The camera advertised below is a Minolta. That company’s cameras were taken into space with the Apollo missions and the company partnered with Leica on its lenses. It was later merged with Konica then swallowed up by Sony.

The gap-toothed man pointing at the microwave is “comedian” Jimmy Tarbuck – not a favourite of mine hence the speech marks – and the legendary Diana Dors is the heavily airbrushed lady. She died in 1984. Once a British screen diva, she had a starring role in the Adam and the Ants video for Prince Charming.

The disastrous lead up to the 1983 general election

Posted on by The Thatcher Crisis Years

In 1983, Thatcher called a general election. The Tories had been in power since 1979 and had gone through a very rocky first two years with economic collapse, riots and rumblings within the government against Maggie. But a couple of things played into her hands: the war in the Falklands and a dreadful Labour campaign in 83.

The Labour slogan was utterly uninspiring: Think Positive, Act Positive, Vote Positive. Worse than that, it was abundantly clear to anybody inside or outside the party that the leadership didn’t believe in its own election manifesto. A month before polling, ITV’s “TV Eye” programme took a look at Labour and it wasn’t pretty viewing. Michael Foot is interviewed and I leave you to judge what went wrong.

Queen’s Speech for a nuclear war

Posted on by The Thatcher Crisis Years

Government papers released now reveal that within Thatcher’s government there was real concern about sole American control of nuclear weapons stationed in the UK – especially at the time of the Greenham Common protests.  Defence secretaries John Nott then Michael Heseltine would have liked dual keys over the weapons of mass destruction but they didn’t get them.

The papers also reveal that civil servants rehearsed for the scenario of a nuclear war and even planned a broadcast by the Queen to the British people.  The speech would have said the following:

I have never forgotten the sorrow and the pride I felt as my sister and I huddled around the nursery wireless set listening to my father’s inspiring words on that fateful day in 1939

And this

Not for a single moment did I imagine that this solemn and awful duty would one day fall to me

The appalling treatment of Peter Tatchell as a Labour candidate in 1983

Posted on by The Thatcher Crisis Years

Peter Tatchell – the prolific human rights campaigner – first came to national prominence as the Labour candidate in a by-election held in Bermondsey, south London, in 1983. If ever an episode in politics revealed the prejudices and bigotries of the age, then it was this one. Even to look back on it now just makes me depressed.

The reason for the by-election was the decision in 1981 of old Labour stalwart Bob Mellish not to run again for the seat.  Mellish was a die-hard Harold Wilson loyalist who once announced in 1976 that he was NOT an “anti-racialist” and opposed letting the Malawi Asians in to the UK, in spite of the fact they had UK passports and had been forcibly expelled by the Malawi government. It’s worth noting that 1976 was, in this humble scribe’s view, the high water mark of National Front activity and attacks on Asians in Britain – particularly those who had come from Uganda, fleeing Idi Amin.

Needless to say that Mellish did not appreciate the Bennite and Militant swing to the left within his constituency party in the early 80s. First he announced his intention not to run again, then decided to sit as an Independent MP before finally finding a home with other Labour renegades in the newly formed Social Democrat Party.

Just to stick up a final two fingers to the Bermondsey comrades, he resigned his seat precipitating a by-election in 1983. And several Labour councillors joined his desertion to the SDP.

His constituency party had already selected Australian born Peter Tatchell. It should be noted that contrary to some misinformation, the Militant Tendency did not support Tatchell – they had their own preferred candidate who if my memory serves me right had an impressive 80s mullet.

Tatchell’s opponents would go on to use his place of birth and sexuality as door-to-door campaigning issues. The Liberals – now the Lib Dems – squirmed on this issue for years but if you’ve ever campaigned against a Lib Dem candidate (I have), you won’t be surprised by any tactic they employ. I’m not going to repeat the anti-gay slogans and innuendos – just Google away and you’ll find them.

From his selection in 1981, elements in the Labour Party goaded on by their former colleagues now in the SDP tried to get rid of Tatchell – trying to rule him out as a candidate in Bermondsey. In 1981, Tatchell penned an article on his political views that advocated direct action against the Thatcher government.

The inappropriately named Labour turned SDP MP James Wellbeloved rose to his feet in parliament and asked Margaret Thatcher – and Labour leader Michael Foot – to denounce this call for extra-parliamentary action.

What Tatchell had written was no different to what many MPs and Labour activists advocated at that time but the vehemence towards him was, to my mind, very much tinged with the casual homophobia of the era. There was a sneering vitriol employed towards him – and he’s spoken since of the threats he faced as a candidate.

Michael Foot, in a reaction that even surprised me at the time, denounced Tatchell and said he would never be accepted into the Labour Party, let alone run as a candidate. Needless to say those words and no doubt his hat were force fed to the party leader at a later date as Tatchell did indeed run – though he would be defeated by Liberal Simon Hughes (who subsequently declared his own sexuality decades later).