What If Gordon Banks Had Played, Part 13

Friday 4th March 1977 — 1.30am

The Tottenham count was coming to an end. Norman Atkinson looked out of the window of the hall into the street outside. Abandoned placards and barriers from an unpublicised protest the day before still littered the streets and the posters on the boarded up newsstands still excitedly proclaimed the news of Thorpe's arrest of changes of conspiracy to murder. He could see a lone soldier on watch below the streetlight opposite. Atkinson was a nervous man, he had experienced little anguish in deciding to throw his lot in with the Bennite faction of the Labour Party and his National Unity opponant, Kate Alexander, was a Liberal who he had not expected to lose many votes to. The arrest of the National Unity movement's most prominent spokesman on murder changes had destroyed any such possibily anyway.

As the votes were piled in neat bundles on the trellis table at the far end of the hall, Atkinson's worry was not the National Unity candidate though, but the Conservatives. After 33 years of representing Tottenham Atkinson was going to loose to a bloody Tory. He had had a nine thousand majority at the last election, and in a small seat like Tottenham that was a thirty percent majority — wiped out.

A few minutes later Atkinson shuffled onto the stage for the declaration.

Miss Kate Alexander, the National Unity candidate — 4,631 votes.

Mr Norman Atkinson, the Labour Party candidate — 10,212 votes.

Mr Eric Gutteridge, the Worker's Revolutionary Party candidate, 76 votes.

Mr Roy Painter, the Conservative Party candidate — 12,849 votes.

The number of rejected votes was 136. I hereby declare Mr Roy Painter to be the duly elected member for the Tottenham constituency.

Atkinson shook his head. This was not going to be a landslide, it was going to be a massacre.

From G Clarke, “Powell's Landslide Victory” in The Times Guide to The House of Commons 1977 (Times Books, 1977)

The 1977 General Election took place amongst some of the most unusal circumstances ever seen in a British election, and the result was similarly unique. Elections called during a threat to national security, so-called “khaki elections”, have often resulted in large majorities for the governing party. The 1977 election was not only called at a time of national crisis, but also saw the main opposition party lose two leaders within a month and split into two opposing factions, the rapid creation of a new political coalition and the arrest of one of its leading spokesman on suspicion of orchestrating the murder of his alleged homosexual lover during the final hours of the campaign.

The word landslide hardly begins to describe the scale of Prime Minister Enoch Powell's victory. Of 641 seats contested the Conservative Party won 560. This gives the new Government a majority of 479 — the largest majority ever returned at a General Election. Of the four opposition parties that contested the election nationwide, the Labour Party and the three National Unity parties (Labour, Liberal and Conservative), all four opposing leaders lost their seats. Roy Jenkins, the National Labour leader narrowly lost to the Conservative Party in Birmingham while the non-National Unity Labour leader, Tony Benn, was resoundingly defeated in Bristol South-East. Jeremy Thorpe, the disgraced leader of the Liberal Party, was also defeated for his North Dorset seat. Sir Ian Gilmour, the effective leader of the National Conservative faction, lost his Norfolk seat.

The prospective figurehead of a National Unity Government, the former British Ambassador to France, Christopher Soames, succesfully took Old Bexley & Sidcup, the seat formerly held by the ex-Conservative leader, the late Edward Heath. Mr Soames is however left with a paltry and fractious party to lead. The Liberal Party were decimated by the untimely fall from grace of Mr Thorpe and the only survivors were four Liberals with high enough public profiles to be returned despite their association with the former Leader. The Labour Party's frontbench were similarly decimated, of the Shadow Cabinet only Roy Mason, Fred Mulley, Harold Lever and John Morris were returned to Parliament.

From “An Unhappy Juncture: The Powell Government” by Anthony Selsdon (Harpercollins, 1988)

Powell's overwhelming victory at the 1977 General election gave him carte blanche to recreate the Government in his own image. The Cabinet appointed on the 4th March was unashamedly right-wing. Whitelaw, still recovering from the injuries sustained during the election campaign was moved into the position of Party Chairman. He was replaced by James Molyneaux, who had been on the backbenches since resigning the previous year.

The emollient Geoffrey Howe was moved from being Foreign Secretary to become Leader of the House of Commons, which had been temporarily filled by Margaret Thatcher since the Westminster bombing, while John Nott was moved from Defence to become Foreign Secretary. New additions to the cabinet included Alan Clark at Defence, Richard Body at Agriculture, Lord Sudeley as Leader of the House of Lords, Nigel Lawson at Energy and Harvey Proctor as Chief Secretary.

From “Making Sense of the Troubles”, J. McCrittrick (Blackstaff, 1999)

Reporting restrictions had meant that any coverage there was of the problems in Northern Ireland were limited to accounts of IRA atrocities and British military successes. The General Election campaign drew further attention away from the province, indeed for an election that was supposedly fought upon the Government's policy towards Republican terrorism, the actual details of the Government's policy recieved scant attention; the two failed assassination attempts upon cabinet ministers and a small bomb at Catterick army barracks were the only ocassions when discussion of security matters in the election campaign rose above mud-slinging and rhetoric.

The army's advance continued throughout February. On February 13th reporting restrictions were introduced through Orders in Council for foreign journalists, these required foreign journalists to hold a permit and required all copy to be cleared by British intelligence services. The army successfully extended the area under its control to the majority of the province, with the exception of Derry itself, County Fermanagh and South Tyrone, although there were continuing outbreaks of violence throughout the province, and army patrols in rural areas remained vulnerable to snipers and ambushes.

Violence was endemic in Derry city itself. The Western half of the city was entirely under the control of the IRA while there were constant clashes between republican paramilitaries and armed loyalists in the Waterside area. The loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Defence Council, alledgedly supplied with weapons through the British security services, conducted two bloody incursions into occupied Derry on the 23rd and 28th February and in the weeks surrounding the election were responsible for hundreds of attacks upon Catholic families in the towns and villages of County Londonderry, further swelling the number of Catholic refugees passing through the army checkpoints into the Republic of Ireland. There were similar attacks throughout the province, attacks which are often associated with accusations of army collusion or active participation. Revenge attacks upon the Protestant community were less widespread, if only because of the proportion of the Catholic population that had either fled or was in custody.

Ballotting for the general election was successfully carried out in 20 of the 21 new Northern Ireland constituencies. The Secretary of State decided that it would be too dangerous to go ahead with the ballot in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, while in Derry balloting only took place in the unoccupied Eastern half of the city. The General election resulted in the return of 19 Conservative MPs, with only the DUP's Ian Paisley withstanding the Conservative landslide.

Sectarian violence was not confined to the Province itself. There were widespread outbreaks of violence on the British mainland. While these were mainly isolated incidents upon rundown housing estates, there were at least six nights of full scale riots in Glasgow and Liverpool, and there were several instances of families of Irish travellers being attacked by mobs. Terrorism on the mainland was limited to three attacks during the election campaign, however, aside from the four men charged in relation to the Westminster bombing, of one of the active IRA units on the British mainland in January 1977 was detained, and the British Security forces remained on standby expecting further terrorist activity from the remaining units.

Violence also erupted in the Republic of Ireland, angering the Irish Government. Despite attempts to placate the Irish by the outgoing Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe, and his replacement, John Nott, in March the Irish Government proposed a UN resolution condemning British violence and calling for a UN brokered negotiated settlement leading to joint sovereignty maintained by a UN peacekeeping force. The motion was defeated in the security council, but gained the support of the USA, under pressure from their own powerful Irish lobby.

7th April 1977

“Mr Merlyn Rees!”

The Leader of the Opposition took to the despatch box. The National Unity coalition had not even lasted until the first sitting of the new Parliament. Without a Parliamentary majority to lead there was no point in the coalition, and the Labour (or Labour[Owen] as the National Labour faction were titled in the offical Parliamentary reports) and Liberal parties had rapidly chosen their own new leaders. The horrors of the Westminster bombing and the disasterous defeat at the polls had robbed the Labour Party of their big names — the leadership was contended between the anti-European Peter Shore (who was still associated with Tony Benn), Dr David Owen, recently returned for the late Bob Mellish's Bermondsey seat (not enough experience), Harold Lever (too rich), John Morris (who gained some support from the phalanx of Welsh Labour MPs — but not enough support) and the eventual winner, Merlyn Rees. Neil Kinnock was elected as his Deputy, if indeed a Parliamentary Party of only 42 members warranted a Deputy Leader.

“The House will be well aware of the Official Opposition's unstinting support for the Government's stance against terrorism. Does the Prime Minister agree with me that cannot afford to treat only the symptoms of the the disease — we must also treat the cause? Can the Prime Minister assure me that he will look at the Irish government's proposals for a permanent peace in Northern Ireland with an open mind?”

“Mr Speaker, Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom; it's inhabitants are British subjects and they have consistently indicated their desire to remain such. The United Nations Organisation claims its purpose is to promote peace between states. There is no currently no conflict between states for them to concern themselves with — the present situation is a domestic security matter that is being dealt with by the security forces. In the unlikely event that we cannot keep our own house in order I am sure that we will seek advice from foreign nations. At present however the interference of the United Nations and the Republic of Ireland is neither appropriate, warranted or welcomed.”

“Mr Robert Parry!”

The other Labour “leader” rose to his feet. The Bennite left of the Labour Party had suffered an even greater humiliation at the General Election, with Tony Benn pushed into third place in his Bristol seat. The dozen oddballs and extremists who had limped back to Westminster were barely able to hold together as a Parliamentary grouping. Benn technically remained their leader, waiting in the wilderness for a by-election and complaining to a press prevented from publishing his comments about the Government conspiracy to keep him out of Parliament. Parry had eventually been nominated to speak on behalf of the Party at Question Time.

Parry's question, an almost formulaic rant against Powell's “fascist junta” was almost drowned out by the howls of derision from the Conservative MPs who now filled not only the benches on the Government side of the House, but also the “opposition” benches below the gangway. Powell answer was both dismissive and jingoistic in equal measure.

“Mr John Skeffington!”

“Can the Prime Minister enlighten me as to why we continue to kow-tow to the USA through our membership of NATO when at times of crisis far from offering us support, they conspire against us with foreign states.”

“I thank the honourable gentleman for his question. He is quite correct, as so-called allies the USA's involvement in this distasteful attempt to influence internal British affairs is particularly inappropriate. I shall certainly be speaking with President Reagan on this matter and as the situation presently stands, the USA should not expect a greater degree of fidelity from their allies as they have demonstrated to us.”

From P Norton, “Parliament in the 1970s” in “The Fall and Rise of Parliament” ed. P Norton (OUP, 1993)

The huge Conservative majority in the 1977 Parliament decreased further the relevance of Parliament in British political life. The fractious, divided and demoralised opposition, which had lost the vast majority of its most talented membership was unable to mount any sort of credible challenge to the Government in the Commons chamber where the Conservative Party's sheer force of numbers enabled them to dominate totally debates. The low number of opposition MPs also made it almost impossible to find sufficient opposition members to fill committee places, and large amounts of legislation was passed without any effective scrunity from opposing parties. The defeat of the Government's most eloquent critics, MPs such as Gilmour, Jenkins and Benn also meant that the focus for opposition to the Government moved to outside Parliament.

Parliament was further sidelined by the Government's continuing use of Orders in Council for security measures. Terrorism legislation had granted the Government almost limitless powers during a State of Emergency and hence the majority of legislation affecting security concerns was enacted through the Privy Council, again without any Parliamentary scrutiny.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, by the middle of 1977, Parliament had ceased to be an important institution in the British polity.

From “Modern British History 1945-1997” by Norman Lowe (MacMillan 1998)

The Spring and Summer of 1977 saw simmering violence and dissent across Britain. The stationing of troops in Liverpool and Glasgow did little to prevent outbreaks of sectarian violence and anti-Powellite demonstrations occured despite the police's attempts to ban them as security risks, due to the possibility of them being used as covers for terrorist activity. April and May saw high profile university protests and sit-ins over the Government's limitations on civil liberties, including most notably student's 6 week occupation of buildings at the LSE. In May the Secretary of State for Education, Cecil Parkinson, introduced new regulations under the Terrorism Act to prevent the use of university buildings for “the promotion of political views sympathetic to terrorism”. This resulted in the forced closure of several University Union buildings but if anything only increased both tensions on University campuses and the number of anti-Government protests.

Given the levels of tension there were discussions in the cabinet about whether it was wise to continue with the planned Jubilee celebrations. It was eventually agreed that the planned events would go ahead, given that the emergency security provisions would remain in place throughout the celebrations.