Fran Yeoman and Kaya Burgess: Looks familiar ... how Labour Prime Minister put off election just before real crisis set in
[Fran Yeoman and Kaya Burgess have both written articles published in The Times.]
As Gordon Brown is again urged by some to call a general election in the face of a worsening economy, records released today offer an insight into the mind of a previous Labour prime minister faced with the same decision.
Official papers made public today under the 30-year rule disclose how James Callaghan decided against a poll in the autumn of 1978 because of a “malicious delight” in confounding the Tories and a determination not to dance to the newspapers’ tune.
Speculation about an impending election had reached fever pitch during the summer of 1978, but Callaghan returned from his holiday at the end of August with his mind “90 per cent made up” that he would persevere for another year, according to a memo written by his principal private secretary, Ken Stowe. The Prime Minister optimistically thought the unions would agree to his administration’s attempts to restrict pay rises to try to curb inflation. Rather than a prompt election and another probable hung Parliament, he gambled that a rosier economic outlook should deliver a Labour victory in the spring of 1979.
Instead, the Winter of Discontent intervened, and Callaghan’s fateful decision helped to usher in the first Thatcher Government and almost two decades in opposition for Labour.
In the autumn of 1978, it could have been different. The Government’s stock was rising. But Callaghan worried about calling an election “when it could be held that the timing was dictated” by popular “tax concessions”. Mr Stowe noted on September 6: “He added as a malicious afterthought that he would get great pleasure out of disappointing the Tory expectations about an October election.”..
Read entire article at Times (UK)
As Gordon Brown is again urged by some to call a general election in the face of a worsening economy, records released today offer an insight into the mind of a previous Labour prime minister faced with the same decision.
Official papers made public today under the 30-year rule disclose how James Callaghan decided against a poll in the autumn of 1978 because of a “malicious delight” in confounding the Tories and a determination not to dance to the newspapers’ tune.
Speculation about an impending election had reached fever pitch during the summer of 1978, but Callaghan returned from his holiday at the end of August with his mind “90 per cent made up” that he would persevere for another year, according to a memo written by his principal private secretary, Ken Stowe. The Prime Minister optimistically thought the unions would agree to his administration’s attempts to restrict pay rises to try to curb inflation. Rather than a prompt election and another probable hung Parliament, he gambled that a rosier economic outlook should deliver a Labour victory in the spring of 1979.
Instead, the Winter of Discontent intervened, and Callaghan’s fateful decision helped to usher in the first Thatcher Government and almost two decades in opposition for Labour.
In the autumn of 1978, it could have been different. The Government’s stock was rising. But Callaghan worried about calling an election “when it could be held that the timing was dictated” by popular “tax concessions”. Mr Stowe noted on September 6: “He added as a malicious afterthought that he would get great pleasure out of disappointing the Tory expectations about an October election.”..