The winter of discontent of 1978/9, which brought an end to Callaghan’s premiership, was an entirely fitting retribution. Sadly, the population at large had to suffer the consequences.

Claims that the economy was on the mend when Callaghan left office in May 1979 are pure myth – for accounts of reality, try: Richard Coopey & Nicholas Woodward (eds): Britain in the 1970s (UCL Press 1996). The inflation rate had already started to rise again towards the end of 1978. Several of the major state-owned industries – like British Steel and the then recently nationalised British Leyland motor group – were each running at annual loses of hundreds of millions, all duly subsidised by taxpayers. The complacency of the Callaghan government about all this was staggering. However, Britain had become a net oil exporter by the end of the 1970s when world oil prices had about quadrupled in 1973/4 and doubled again as a consequence of the Iranian revolution 1978/9. The ensuing appreciation of the Sterling real exchange rate was bound to have depressing consequences for British industries open to international competition, whatever the complexion of Britain’s government in the 1980s, as was reining back inflation, which had begun to accelerate again by the end of 1978.

After Callaghan resigned as Labour leader following the election defeat of May 1979, the party took a huge lurch into political fantasy land – check Tony Benn’s diaries on that. Come the 1983 election and the party was saying the way forward was to withdraw from the European Common Market, take into state ownership the commanding heights of the economy and unilateral nuclear disarmament, the cause celebre then of Blair, Straw and Cook: Blair was first elected to Parliament on that platform. Only in 1999 from the Stasi files in the reunified Germany did we learn of the presence of a Stasi spy on the national council of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/09/99/britain_betrayed/451366.stm

And thanks to you and your’s we are suffering our ninth of Tony and his cronies. Pots and kettles.

So Wilson became the first PM in history to have to return the country to normality after Heath started his credit deregulation and property boom which brought Midland Bank to the brink of ruin and a B of E rescue.

That Callghan succeeded him allowed for the corruption of David Owen as Foreign Sec putting Callaghan’s son-in-law as Ambassador to the US; that same Peter Jay who had persuaded Callaghan to back Monetarism.

Then we had Healey running a budget every 3 months and putting 25% VAT on “luxuries” like irons and electronic components, but 8% VAT on ironing-boards.

We had already endured Shirley Williams putting on food subsidies – decidig that Blue Stilton was “too middle class” for subsidy but that Danish Blue was suiably proletarian to merit subsidy.

Callaghan cobbled together a working coalition by getting Michael Foot to work with the Liberals vote by vote. Foot also brought in the Job Subsidy scheme (TES) which seems now to be a forerunner of Brown’s Working Families Tax Credit (which is even there for single people).

Did I forget Tony Benn and the Meriden Motorcycle Cooperative, and the National Enterprise Board under Lord Ryder, and the crooks who got rich at British Leyland..?………..one of two still meet Gordon Brown to advise on dodgy accounting.

Ah yes, Callaghan and Healey who were stuffed by the Treasury on the basis of false numbers to call in the IMF………that was a farcical stunt. Just as in 1931 the Treasury stiffed them and they fell for it; pity Healey and Callaghan were such dunderheads at Economics.

So, we can think of Margaret Jay as the daughter of this relica Stanley Baldwin; the Tammany Hall politician……………yes Lady Jay who shacked up with Carl Bernstein before being reinvented as the Leaderless of The Lords…………..poor Ivor Richards….dumped to make way for a lightweight.

What can I say about Callaghan ? That since Macmillan political memoirs have not been worth reading let alone writing.

Most of the problems faced in the 1976-79 LCallaghan Government were ones he had caused in part by his deadbeat performance as Chancellor and Home Secretary in the 1960s – he botched Northern Ireland; he botched devaluation; he botched In Place of Strife…………………………all in all he lived a long life, bought a farm, and was absolutely superfluous to the national good.

Its just a little unfair that he seems to be the one associated with the failures of the 70’s when virtually all the problems were caused by Heath and Wilson.

At the end of the day his main weakness was that he lacked Wilson’s political savy – if he’d called an election in 78, he’d probably have won and by 83 maybe things would have been alot better and history would remember him better.

I imagine Oliver’s obit, if he does one, will be reasonably symphathetic. Callaghan came fifth out of eleven in his list of best PMs since the war (http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2004/04/best_and_worst.html), and indeed he said,

“I take a minority view in holding James Callaghan to have been a good Prime Minister”

I agree. It’s remarkable how much the Tory (and perhaps more relevantly hard left?) demonisation of the Callaghan years has seeped into British political consciousness. After the turbulent Heath/Wilson years things were actually on the whole improving quite well by 1979.

“…instability of monetary demand, especially in the context of supply shocks and declines in potential output growth, complicated the task of monetary authorities. As a result, during the 1980s most central banks—with some notable exceptions—either abandoned or downplayed the role of monetary targets”.
IMF World Economic Outlook, October 1996, p.106.

Not to mention the British people. Oh, those pesky electors!

Just guessing, but I suspect the Tories had something to do with it too.

“[Callaghan’s] background in the trade union movement led to his being a focus for opposition to the employment laws proposed by his cabinet colleague Barbara Castle in 1969. In this struggle (called: The Battle of Downing Street) he ultimately prevailed, and the proposals (set out in the White paper: In Place of Strife) were dropped. Some within the party who disliked Harold Wilson began to plot to destabilize him and have Callaghan take over at about this time. Callaghan also took the decision to deploy United Kingdom troops in Northern Ireland after a request from the Northern Ireland Government.”
http://www.answers.com/topic/james-callaghan

There is a fairly broad consensus across sources that Callaghan, more than any other individual member of Harold Wilson’s cabinet of 1966-70, was responsible for forcing the prime minister to eventually back down from the proposals for curbing abuses of trade union power as set out in the white-paper: In Place of Strife (January 1969). The standard history Kenneth Morgan: Britain Since 1945 (OUP 2001) summarises:

“Some of [the white paper’s] provisions, for instance over registration, notably strengthened the role of the unions. But what captured attention were three other proposals – that there should be a twenty-eight day ‘conciliation pause’ [prior to strikes], that the minister could if necessary impose a settlement in inter-union disputes, and that that there should be power to order a strike ballot if circumstances dictated. All these would backed by ‘discretionary reserve powers’, with the threat of penal powers lying behind them. . .” [pp.300].

It was a supreme irony that, in due course, Callaghan’s own premiership in 1976-9 was finally discredited and brought down by what was dubbed the “winter of discontent” of 1978/9, when refuse piled up in the streets of central London and, in places, the dead went unburied. The Conservatives with Mrs Thatcher’s leadership won the election on 4 May 1979:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/4/newsid_2503000/2503195.stm

Although things didnt look good in ‘79 is worth bearing in mind that he had to very much clean up the mess left by the Heath and Wilson goverments and IMF bailout.