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planty good. Saturday

1:32

5th October 1974 was

1:35

a big night for Paul Craig and Carol

1:37

Burns. By coincidence,

1:39

their birthdays fell on the same day.

1:42

And Paul, who was due to turn 22, thought

1:45

it would be nice to have a little party. Only

1:48

a few weeks earlier, Carol, three years his

1:50

junior, had been accepted into the Women's Royal

1:52

Army Corps. So they had something special

1:54

to celebrate. She chose the venue.

1:57

A pub not far from her barracks. by

2:00

some of her new friends who used to meet their

2:02

boyfriends there on Saturday nights. Meanwhile,

2:04

Paul had a surprise up his sleeve. Unbeknown

2:07

to Carol, he had invited her parents

2:09

down from Borenwood for the evening, and

2:12

when she left headquarters, all three of

2:14

them were waiting outside to greet her. They

2:16

walked onto the pub, the horse and

2:19

groom in Guildford, which was already

2:21

filling up. The atmosphere

2:23

was noisy, happy. Many

2:25

of the drinkers were soldiers and their girlfriends,

2:28

enjoying a night out. The

2:30

Burns family found a table in an alcove by

2:32

the jukebox. Carol disappeared to the toilet

2:34

for a minute or two. When she came

2:36

back, Paul had moved up and taken her seat,

2:39

so she slipped in beside him. It

2:42

was almost nine o'clock. Then,

2:45

quite suddenly, there was a

2:47

gigantic bang, and everything went

2:49

black. The next thing Carol knew, she

2:51

was lying on the ground, her ears full

2:53

of buzzing, her mouth full of smoke and

2:55

dust. Someone was lying on

2:57

the floor beside me, she said later. It

3:01

was Paul. So

3:03

Dominic, that is from your

3:05

history of Britain in 1974

3:07

to 1979,

3:10

Seasons in the Sun, and it

3:12

describes what has been commemorated as the

3:14

Guildford pub bombing. So Paul is

3:17

dead? Yes. Paul

3:19

was killed straight away. He was one of five

3:21

people killed that evening, 5th October

3:23

1974. There was a

3:25

bomb in the alcove that you mentioned

3:28

by the jukebox that had been planted

3:30

by the provisional IRA. It's a reminder

3:32

of how chance matters in history, because

3:34

when Carol went to the toilet, they

3:36

moved places. If she was still sitting

3:39

where she had been, she would have been

3:41

killed, not Paul. Her parents

3:43

were very badly injured. The

3:45

father, I think, was in a coma for five weeks. Four other

3:47

people were killed, 68 people injured.

3:50

Two of the people who died were

3:53

teenagers, who'd also, teenage girls, who'd

3:55

also joined the

3:57

Women's Royal Army Corps, and two teenage

3:59

boys. always Scott's Gods. Sir

4:01

William Forsyth and James Hunter, who were friends

4:04

in the same street in Renfrewshire, who

4:06

had only joined up a month beforehand.

4:10

And the Guildford Pub bombing sent

4:12

an absolute shockwave through

4:15

Britain. There have been many bombings, of course,

4:17

in Northern Ireland in the last couple of

4:19

years, but this was seen as something... A

4:22

bomb in a pub in Britain

4:24

in the home counties was seen

4:26

as unbelievably shocking. And of course, what

4:28

made it more shocking, Tom, was that

4:31

afterwards, the police charged four

4:33

innocent people who went to prison for 15 years.

4:35

Yeah. Because that's what it's chief you remembered for

4:37

now, isn't it? Yes. And almost

4:39

certainly the culprits were a group called the Balcon

4:42

Street Gang, who were a provisional

4:44

IRA unit who were kind of on the

4:46

loose in England in 1974 and

4:48

1975, and

4:50

who actually said at their

4:52

trial in 1977, there were innocent

4:55

people in prison for the Guildford Pub bombing,

4:57

but the police and someone didn't listen. So

5:00

yeah, it's a pretty shocking story. And this isn't...

5:03

We're at the final episode of this 1974 marathon. And this

5:07

is five days before the

5:09

general election campaign, the second general

5:11

election in 1974, which is

5:13

where we ended. Didn't we last time? Harold

5:15

Wilson has decided on the showdown

5:17

with Ted Heath to try and give himself

5:19

the mandate because he's

5:22

been leading a minority government. And

5:24

this sort of darkness

5:27

overshadows the election. And

5:29

you described in the previous

5:31

episode how Wilson is seen

5:33

by many people on the

5:35

right as so illegitimate as

5:37

actually to be potentially a

5:39

Soviet mole. People

5:42

on the left are talking

5:44

with some justification of the possibility

5:46

of a right wing coup. Yes. There

5:49

is a sense of extreme

5:51

polarization in the country. And

5:54

then to have this act of brutal

5:56

violence, as you say, in the home counties

5:58

in Surrey, one of the... the

6:00

richest and most prosperous areas

6:02

in Britain. I

6:05

assume then that it must have radically

6:07

enhanced the sense that many people have,

6:09

that this is a state of crisis

6:12

like none that Britain has faced since the war.

6:14

I think what it doesn't do is to create

6:17

a sort of, what you might call a histrionic

6:19

or extreme reaction. Actually what it adds to is

6:21

a sense, I think, of weariness,

6:23

of depression, because don't forget the conflicts in Northern

6:25

Ireland have been going on since the late 1960s.

6:29

So we're into kind of a year five of

6:31

it now. And most people don't understand it. Most

6:33

people in Great Britain don't understand it. They don't

6:35

really care, to be brutally honest, but they are

6:37

horrified by it and by the fact that it

6:39

is, as they see it, seeping

6:41

into the life of... So the Times actually says

6:43

that, doesn't it? It says that no election since

6:46

the war had been held in such a mood

6:48

of public uncertainty and depression. Yeah. So depression rather

6:50

than anger. Yes. I mean, there is anger, as

6:52

we will see later on. There are people who

6:55

are calling for the death penalty for terrorists, because

6:57

the death penalty had been done away with just

6:59

a few years earlier. But I think it adds

7:01

to a sense of kind of world weariness, of

7:04

shabbiness, of ineffectual government, and a

7:06

sense of helplessness actually, I guess is

7:08

the word, Tom, that Britain is

7:11

now, having been for so long, the

7:14

great actor on the world stage. That

7:16

for the first time, I think in the mid

7:19

1970s, people realized that Britain is actually on the

7:21

receiving end of change and

7:23

of major geopolitical developments. And

7:25

there's a sense of impotence, I think.

7:27

Impotence of the government's only about Northern

7:30

Ireland, but impotence to deal with inflation

7:32

or the pace of globalization and deindustrialization

7:34

and all of these kinds of things. And is there

7:37

a sense also of, I might

7:39

always say boredom, tedium, a sense

7:41

that this is just an

7:43

endless cycle of two rather shopsoiled leaders

7:45

in the form of Wilson and Heath.

7:48

Neither of them are inspirational. Neither of them

7:50

really seem to promise a kind

7:52

of radical change. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

7:54

So Wilson, who we talked about a lot last

7:56

time, the sort of chaotic, I mean, some people

7:58

might think that's a good idea. think we were

8:00

being a bit harsh on Wilson, that sort of

8:02

chaotic six-month period after he became Prime

8:04

Minister. But actually the chaos really continues

8:06

into the election campaign. So the very

8:09

first meeting of his election team, Tom,

8:11

has to be moved from room to

8:13

room because Marcia Williams, who played such

8:15

a leading role in the last episode,

8:17

she's very keen that her nemesis, in

8:19

his high command to her, Joe Haynes,

8:21

his press secretary and Bernard Donahue, his

8:23

policy chief. I mean, to be fair,

8:25

they have been plotting to murder her.

8:27

They have, right. But they've been discussing

8:29

plotting to murder her. They haven't actually

8:31

been plotting. I think that's semantic.

8:34

She doesn't want them to come to the meeting,

8:36

but she keeps changing the room behind

8:38

their back. So that sort of behavior.

8:40

Also, Wilson gets tanked up on

8:42

Brandy before his first TV broadcast.

8:45

So there's that sort of sense of general

8:47

cedeness and shabbiness and whatnot. So Wilson's having

8:49

all kinds of trouble with Marcia. What about,

8:51

so there's Tony Benn, who's been picking up

8:54

all kinds of basically foisting

8:56

policies on Wilson that he doesn't really

8:58

want. That's right. Wilson doesn't really want

9:00

to go into that election with any

9:02

policies at all. Because Wilson's very thing

9:04

you said about people being bored. Wilson

9:06

wants people to be bored because his

9:08

promise is I will give you a

9:10

quiet life. No more conflict

9:12

with the unions. We've got our lovely social

9:14

contract, which fans of Russo will remember from

9:16

the last episode where we will basically give

9:19

the unions the pay deals they want. And

9:21

we will then give them lots of extra

9:23

goodies like health and safety stuff and all

9:26

these things. And in return, they will moderate

9:28

their future pay demands. Tony Benn, on the

9:30

other hand, is the great apostle of nationalization

9:32

of a national enterprise board of state planning

9:35

and all this stuff. And he's the great

9:37

bogeyman. And Wilson basically tries to keep him

9:39

in a box throughout the election campaign. And

9:41

there are all these stories that keep coming

9:44

into labor high command that the newspapers are

9:46

preparing these amazing revelations about Tony Benn. That

9:48

he's a drug addict. Oh, really? Because I

9:50

mean, Tony Benn is the most esteemiest of

9:52

men, isn't he? He's a teetotaler. He loves

9:54

his tea. He does nothing more than

9:56

that. And he also, as we discovered when he appeared

9:58

in the rest of his. just

10:00

second historical Love Island. He very much loves

10:02

his wife Caroline. It's one of the great

10:04

South political love stories. But the newspapers also

10:06

had apparently prepared this story that he was

10:08

taking part in Orges at a place called

10:10

the Bickenhall Mansions, which is a Marleybone and

10:12

they had a Wardian mansion block. Sunday Mirror

10:14

editor passed the story to Harold Wilson and

10:16

Wilson called Ben in and he said, sort

10:18

of smoked his pipe at him and said,

10:21

is it true? Have you been taking part in

10:23

Orges in these? And Ben was very offended

10:25

by this because obviously he happens. Well, he

10:27

would be, of course. And is this the

10:29

point where the tabloids really start going after

10:31

Tony Ben? Because from this point on, he

10:34

will be the great hate object, won't he?

10:36

He's the kind of the standard bearer of

10:38

what the tabloids call the loony left. Yes.

10:40

So they don't call it, they don't really

10:42

coin the loony left phrase for another 10

10:44

years, but absolutely at this point, they're calling

10:46

him a commissar, a Bolshevik, all this kind

10:48

of thing. And actually Wilson goes out of

10:50

his way to sort of basically hide Ben

10:52

under, you know, a massive blanket for the

10:54

next few weeks during the election campaign. So

10:56

that's all very, very inspiring. And meanwhile, what

10:58

about Edward Heath? Well, so

11:00

Ted Heath, fans of Ted Heath will have

11:03

not enjoyed the previous episode because he was

11:05

absent. He was off sulking. He's been defeated.

11:07

I think it's fair to say Ted Heath

11:09

isn't the most busted of busted flushes

11:12

going into the October 1974 campaign because

11:14

he never

11:16

thought he was going to lose Tom. Yeah.

11:18

That first election. And I know

11:21

this is a bad moment for you

11:23

because you're a man of

11:25

Salisbury. Ted Heath, of course, famously went to

11:27

live in Salisbury, a great Wiltshire man. I

11:29

don't know if you like yachting and piano

11:31

playing and stuff. I don't really like yachting,

11:33

no. But his yacht crashes, doesn't

11:36

it? A couple of months before

11:38

the election. Yeah. He's unbelievably

11:40

unlucky. He's got undiagnosed thyroid

11:42

complaint, Heath. His yacht morning

11:44

cloud sank at the Isle of

11:46

Wight and two people died on that. One of him

11:48

was his godson. So that's a very

11:50

bad business. Yeah, that is sad. He has clung

11:53

on to the Tory leadership like Olympus all through the

11:55

summer. He does, doesn't he? He goes to visit Chairman

11:57

Mao who gives him a couple of pandas. Has

12:00

that not beated his profile? No. One

12:03

of his friends said that Mao was the first person he'd seen

12:05

in months who was actually pleased to see him. Which

12:07

is a harsh thing for one of your friends to

12:10

say about him. That is harsh. Now the thing that

12:12

Ted Heath and the Tories do in October 1974, Tom,

12:14

which you will enjoy, because you're

12:16

very much a kind of, I mean,

12:18

without being mean to you, you're a centrist

12:20

dad, aren't you? Ultimately, I guess. And

12:23

Ted Heath runs the ultimate, the

12:25

absolute ultimate centrist dad,

12:28

Rory Stewart, rest his politics

12:30

campaign. Well, I

12:32

can't wait to see if it sweeps him to power. Oh,

12:35

yes. And you can gauge from

12:38

that how effective it's going to be. What's

12:41

the manifestation of this centrist dad manifesto? First

12:43

of all, his aides say to him, you

12:45

were too abrasive in February 1974. Take

12:48

off your suit. Remember that Rory Stewart took off

12:50

his tie. Oh, did, yeah. And then you can

12:52

say the sartorial element is important here. Take off

12:54

your suit and go around the country in your

12:57

shirt sleeves, or indeed in a cuddly jumper. And

12:59

being a fun killer, friendly jovial fellow.

13:02

Now, Ted Heath is not a jovial man, but also

13:04

they say, listen, we're not

13:06

going to win as just ourselves. We

13:08

have to say that we stand for,

13:10

and this is where your restless politics

13:12

comes in, a national unity coalition government,

13:15

a sensible government. Let's get people

13:18

together around the table. Put

13:20

aside the partisan bickering. Okay, so

13:23

he's got all his ministers. Yeah.

13:25

Can I ask you about one particular minister and how... Who's

13:28

it going to be? Oh,

13:30

right. How she reacts

13:32

to this. And this is the

13:34

education secretary, Mrs. Thatcher. Yes. So

13:36

she had not been a great

13:39

star of Heath's government, I

13:41

wouldn't have said. They're quite similar, aren't

13:43

they? So they're both from kind of

13:45

petty bourgeois backgrounds, one might say.

13:47

Yeah, but slightly different. Hers is a

13:49

little bit more respectable. Her father was

13:52

an alderman and ran a shop. Ted

13:54

Heath's father was Basically a builder.

13:56

And I think As a result, she is

13:58

much keener to... Computer background The

14:01

Ted Heath is. So. Teddy's

14:03

bit embarrassed about his background and rebounds

14:05

himself as a petition. Mrs. Thatcher is

14:07

a sort of saab elbowed aspiration or

14:10

lower middle class warrior. In a way

14:12

the Heath isn't really good at this

14:14

point. Yeah I mean is he enthusiastically

14:17

supporting Cease manifesto an election plan as

14:19

he piling in or a sea of

14:21

having nothing to do with it know

14:24

she loves it appears to love it.

14:26

So seat is slightly running with the

14:28

tied with all this coalition business all

14:31

his to sort of wet tory. Motorists

14:33

The kind of patrician people that he

14:35

surrounds himself with. Their. Willie Whitelaw

14:37

as and Syrian Gilmore was pizza walkers and

14:39

p by this names that will be familiar

14:41

some of our old listens of people you

14:44

know about British politics. The next twenty years

14:46

or so. I love

14:48

all this stuff getting together and

14:50

then Aslan Press putting aside survivalism,

14:53

Consensus Anti The Papers Lovitz, the

14:55

Papers are all very be kind

14:57

about The Stumps The Guardian that

15:00

times they all say let's have

15:02

a coalition maybe Liberal Tory may

15:04

be liberal Labor. May. Be

15:06

Tory, labor, national governments in the national interest

15:08

I suppose. A Dominic I mean the in

15:11

a you'll be very theory about this but

15:13

I always else I am. I mean sensible

15:15

politics and one level because after the previous

15:18

next and had thought and he's been able

15:20

to to get together than they would have

15:22

been a coalition. So is there a sense

15:24

in which the Tories are kind of laying

15:27

out there store for teach coalition partners? Yes,

15:29

arguably they think that the Liberals who do

15:31

well again. But sir, I never wanted to

15:33

buy Mrs. Thatcher. Mrs. Thatcher never says word

15:36

of complaints. Battle this now cause later

15:38

on she's the sworn fires compromise and

15:40

consensus. But actually I said previously she

15:42

hadn't been a massive stocks hadn't really

15:44

seats had that much in their first

15:46

election campaign. saved the city to loss

15:48

in the sun. In this one see

15:50

appears more often than any other Tory

15:52

some penta as his the Breakout Star

15:54

sees the Breakout Star says sometimes said

15:56

the when she became so relieved a

15:58

few months later. had ever heard

16:00

of her and she was the sort of the darkest

16:02

of dark horses. That's not true at

16:04

all. She features in their part of the

16:07

tour broadcast more than Ethan Heath himself does

16:09

because they think he's just very

16:12

abrasive. Mrs. Thatcher is maybe more

16:14

annoying. Famous. Yeah.

16:17

And Mrs. Thatcher will appeal to that

16:19

crucial dynamic of housewives, which Heath will

16:22

not appeal to. And actually,

16:24

Mrs. Thatcher has a treat for everybody. She

16:27

has an extraordinary bribe. If

16:29

you're a homeowner in Salisbury,

16:32

let's say in Wiltshire, no matter

16:34

how high inflation and interest rates

16:36

go, obviously this appeared to

16:38

be very high inflation, Mrs. Thatcher will cap

16:40

your mortgage rate at nine and a half

16:43

percent. There is no way it will go

16:45

higher than that. So she's bucking the market.

16:47

She is bucking the market. It is pure

16:49

... It is statism gone mad. It is

16:51

corporatism. It is corporatism. And actually, people who

16:54

would subsequently become her great admirers on the

16:56

right are really appalled by this. They say,

16:58

this is just the most terrible status bribe

17:00

for class homeowners. But she's a great salesman

17:02

for it. She goes on TV. She's promising,

17:05

you know, we'll protect you with the value

17:07

of middle class families, trust-struggling to pay

17:09

the mortgage and all this kind of stuff.

17:11

Hardworking, decent families. And this is basically the

17:13

only policy that the Tories have in October

17:15

1974. The rest is all just waffle

17:19

about coalitions. Yeah. Exactly. So,

17:21

Heath goes to give it his first

17:23

big public meeting in Cardiff. This is

17:26

the new cuddly jovial bed, Heath. And

17:29

he speaks very quietly and no one can hear what he's

17:31

saying because he's obviously been told to tone it down. And

17:34

the first question comes in. Somebody says, what will

17:36

be your first move against inflation, Mr. Heath?

17:38

And he says, to see precisely what

17:40

the situation is. And they say, well,

17:43

then what will you do? And he says, I'll

17:45

take the appropriate action. Come

17:47

on, that's a masterly. You've

17:50

got to give us more than that. So

17:52

the mood is very grim. People on the

17:54

right are just in absolute misery and despair.

17:56

Philip Larkin, Tom, you're a fan of Philip

17:58

Larkin, the poet? Yeah. I mean, he's

18:00

basically the most right-wing person in Western Europe

18:03

at this point. And

18:05

he writes to King's Leomis and he says,

18:07

we're never going to have another Conservative government.

18:10

There's just going to be a series of Labour governments and

18:12

then the Russians are going to step in. And

18:14

he writes back to him and he says, listen, this is

18:16

going to be the last free election. We'll never be allowed

18:19

to vote again. But a lot of people who are kind

18:21

of affluent, upper

18:23

middle class, kind of people who've

18:25

done very well are in absolute

18:27

despair about all this. There's

18:29

a real sense of panic, of kind

18:31

of moral and political panic among

18:33

the propertied classes because they can basically... They've

18:35

got their bribe offer from Mrs Thatcher, but

18:37

they basically know that the Tories aren't going

18:39

to get in. So they're both definitely

18:42

against the Tories. Oh, very much so. Very much so.

18:44

So Labour have a lead of about 8 to 10%

18:46

going into the campaign. Because Ted Heath has just regarded

18:49

us. He's like a football manager who just can't win

18:51

a game. Now, you may

18:53

be wondering, what's happened to our old

18:55

friends? The Liberals. I am wondering about

18:57

that. So the Liberals, the party in

18:59

the centre, led by Jeremy Thorpe, who

19:01

will go on to be responsible

19:04

for the death of a dog on Exmoor

19:06

and be accused of murder and get off.

19:08

Anyway, that's all by the by. We've done

19:10

an episode on that. So what does Jeremy

19:12

Thorpe up to? And does it involve hovercraft?

19:14

It's important to say that whatever the tour

19:16

is, other failings. They're the only party in

19:18

this election who have not in some way

19:20

been involved in a murder plot. Yeah,

19:22

there is that. Well, say what

19:24

you like about Teddy. He never

19:26

plotted it's a murder. Either

19:29

a dog, his ex lover or one

19:31

of his own aides, secretly. Right. So

19:34

Jeremy Thorpe, now you would think because he

19:36

was the breakout star of the first 1974

19:39

election, is this his moment? And he thinks that

19:41

himself, but he has made

19:43

a terrible mistake, Tom. He decides to

19:45

go to tour the land. I

19:48

can't even believe I'm going to say it because it sounds

19:50

so ridiculous. He's going to tour the land by hovercraft. Is

19:54

this because all the liberal target seats are on the coast?

19:57

There's a lot on the coast on the South. Yeah, in the South

19:59

Coast. I mean, there are quite a lot in the

20:01

West Country. I mean, how do you get to the heart

20:04

of the West Country on a hovercraft? Will you go round

20:06

the edge maybe, Tom Willard Seven? I mean, there's this up

20:08

the river haven. But obviously, I

20:10

mean, Britain, I don't know whether

20:12

Britain has peculiarly invested in hovercrafts

20:14

in the 70s. Certainly why I remember being

20:16

at school, very proud of them, in the sort of late

20:18

years of the 70s. All the talk was of hovercraft. Yeah.

20:20

It's like Concord. In my

20:22

mind, yeah, Concord, North Sea oil, the

20:25

hovercraft. This is the future of the

20:27

British economy. Yeah, this is what Britain

20:29

will look like. So Jeremy Thorpe is

20:31

associating himself with a bright technological future,

20:33

perhaps a hint of science fiction. Yes.

20:35

You know, it's all glorious and exciting.

20:37

And maybe people will go around with

20:39

those hover things on their backs as

20:42

well. Exactly. Holidays in Jupiter.

20:44

Exactly. So how does that pan out?

20:46

It goes very, very, very, very, very,

20:49

very, very badly. So Tom, the climax

20:51

of a hovercraft campaign takes

20:53

place in Sidmouth. And

20:56

a reporter who's traveling with Thorpe's campaign thinking,

20:58

you know, could I be right here at

21:00

the next Prime Minister? He writes as follows.

21:02

The first wave struck just as the craft

21:04

was turning off the beach to head away

21:07

to the Isle of White. I

21:09

was pulling on one rope just behind the

21:11

liberal leader when he was nearly swept into

21:13

the sea by some breakers. So

21:16

right there are photographers there who are capturing

21:18

the scene as Thorpe and another liberal guy

21:20

could jump out of staggering through the

21:22

sea with their possessions. So absolutely

21:25

the image of a dynamic go-getting

21:27

future Prime Minister. The

21:30

hovercraft actually ends up being completely

21:32

destroyed by the waves. They'd end

21:34

up abandoning it on the beach,

21:36

on the shingle. And of course,

21:38

everyone then takes photos of this. It's

21:41

all Britain. So

21:43

it's seen as, I mean, it's seen as

21:46

a metaphor for Britain and for the liberals,

21:48

is it? It is. Absolutely. It is. Other

21:50

than this, it's an incredibly uneventful campaign. It

21:52

rains all the time. I mean, it's October,

21:55

so it's very gloomy. This is the, what

21:57

is this, the fourth time that Wilson and

22:00

and Heath have faced each other. So

22:02

it's a bit like one of those

22:04

FA Cup or World Cup finals or

22:06

something where you've seen the same teams

22:08

a thousand times, it's always nil, nil.

22:10

Germany gets Argentina. It's just so depressing.

22:12

This is how people feel. Wilton has

22:14

a pretty comfortable lead. Heath's just wittering

22:16

about coalitions and national unity and he

22:18

hasn't got any policies. Thoughts falling into

22:20

the sea. Yeah, fell into the sea

22:22

and it's over-craft. The only thing that

22:24

can possibly stand in Wilton's way, Tom,

22:26

is Britain's favorite newspaper at the time,

22:28

not necessarily the best selling, but probably

22:30

the one that Middle England enjoyed

22:32

most, which is, of course, Majesty's

22:35

Daily Mail, right? Because the news

22:37

reaches Wilton headquarters. The Daily Mail

22:39

have prepared this enormous story on

22:41

Wilton's finances. And

22:43

actually, Wilton's finances are a little bit

22:46

mysterious. He'd got all these royalties from

22:48

a massive and incredibly boring book that

22:50

he'd written about his 1960s government. And

22:53

he'd given a lot of these

22:55

royalties, it seems, to Marcia, right?

22:57

To spend on school fees for

22:59

her children. Right. And the

23:01

rest was in a Swiss bank account. Right.

23:04

So spending on school fees in Swiss bank accounts. I

23:06

mean, what would Tony Benn make of that? Tony Benn

23:08

would not be impressed at all. And the Daily Mail

23:10

have got this huge story about this, which they're planning

23:12

to run and the Wilton team

23:14

are in absolute kind of tentahawks about it.

23:17

And then there's all kinds of route, they're waiting for the

23:19

mail to run it one night. And there's all rumors coming

23:21

in, there's been a bomb scare, a

23:24

mail headquarters, so

23:26

the place has been evacuated. They're all kind of

23:28

high level meetings taking place about where they're gonna

23:31

run this story that could completely change the course

23:33

of the election. And actually, Wilson's lawyer, Lord Goodman,

23:35

I think it is, wins the

23:37

day and persuades them not to run it

23:39

or intimidates them into not running the story.

23:42

So the next day comes and goes, and

23:45

they don't run the story about

23:47

Wilson's finances. So as polling day

23:49

approaches 10th of October, there's an

23:51

inevitability actually about Wilson's fiction. All

23:54

the newspapers, by the way, very

23:56

few of the newspapers want him to win the Guardian. The

23:59

Guardian wants to win. So when the liberals garden

24:02

loves the hovercraft business, the times wants

24:04

a Tory liberal coalition, the male wants

24:07

a Tory liberal coalition. So the polling

24:09

day comes Thursday, the 10th

24:11

of October, pouring with rain.

24:15

Wilson's aides just obviously spend all the time

24:17

bickering among themselves. Massey has

24:19

got a load of sedatives, which is washing

24:21

down with brandy. So she's joined in the

24:23

drinking. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And

24:25

they sit up and at first it's brilliant. The

24:27

BBC say they're going to get 150 seat majority

24:29

Wilson and Co. But then as the

24:31

night goes on, that majority gets whittled down

24:34

and down and down. And

24:36

he does end up with the majority, Tom, but of just

24:38

three seats. So that's what

24:41

only seven or eight more than he'd

24:43

had in the previous election. Then he started with, yeah. So

24:46

actually Labour's vote has fallen since

24:48

February. The Tory vote had fallen

24:51

even more. It's actually their worst

24:53

performance since 1945 in number

24:55

of votes and votes share the Tory

24:57

performance was terrible, 36%, which is I

24:59

think their worst ever at that point.

25:01

But what wouldn't Rishi Sunak give for

25:03

those figures now? Right. That's

25:05

a fair point. So Heath is done. We'll come

25:08

on to Heath after the break. Just

25:10

before we go into the break, you'll be

25:12

pleased to hear that Wilson celebrates in a

25:14

ludicrously disorganized and chaotic way. I'd be disappointed

25:16

if you didn't. So they spend the evening

25:19

arguing about who's going to go to the

25:21

victory party. There's an argument

25:23

about one of his most faithful aides, the guy

25:25

called Albert Murray, who basically carries his bag for

25:27

him. Marcia says he's not allowed in. So

25:30

the others, I've just taken a dislike to

25:32

him. So the others boycott

25:34

them. Boycott his victory party

25:36

because Albert's not allowed in. There's a great

25:38

deal of rage. They go off to a

25:40

different hotel, I think, to watch the telly.

25:43

Then the next day there's a big argument about

25:45

who's going to be allowed on the flight home

25:47

to London. They finally get to

25:49

London to go to Transport House, Labour

25:52

Party headquarters for their victory celebration. There

25:54

is a bomb scare. So again, that

25:57

issue of the IRA hangs over the

25:59

whole thing. So there's a bomb

26:01

scare, the whole place has to be evacuated.

26:03

And then the really, really big news, that

26:05

day, they've got back to London, they now

26:08

have the tiny majority and they can

26:10

look into turning the nation's fortunes around.

26:13

And Bernard Donahue, the policy chief out

26:15

of Harold Wilson, is at number

26:17

10, and he's actually going to go off

26:19

for the weekend and kind of clear his mind and

26:21

think about what they need to do to sort things

26:24

out. And just before he does, one of Wilson's civil

26:26

servants comes in and says to him, I've got some

26:28

news, we've had this really big breakthrough in

26:31

the lunch negotiation. And

26:34

the big breakthrough is everybody

26:36

is now banned from having lunch at number 10.

26:39

They're sorted all out. And Donahue writes

26:42

in his diary that evening, I hope Harold

26:44

gets a minute to think about the country's

26:46

economy in between acting as a messenger for

26:48

Marcia's hostilities. The nation is going bust. He's

26:51

at a moment of political triumph. And

26:53

he spends his time as a

26:55

messenger on these pathetically trivial matters,

26:58

who eats lunch in number 10. Brilliant.

27:02

After the break, we will look at the immediate

27:04

aftermath of the election. Who's up? Who's

27:06

down? This

27:09

episode is brought to you by State Farm. This episode is brought to you by

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State Farm. You might say all

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I A is on a mission.

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Y C has to see four

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enough savings to retire selling collaboration

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with nickname artist like Wipers. John

28:20

C. I A released Taper right,

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financial future. With one hundred percent

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of streaming. Sales going through a nonprofit

28:29

that he to students how to

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invest stream paper right now and

28:34

to. And

28:43

it wasn't back to the rest. History for the final.

28:46

Segment. Of our For Pop

28:48

epic on the single year of

28:50

mine, seventy four in prison and

28:53

donate. We began this episode with

28:55

a bombing by the Ira of

28:57

a pub. I were going to

28:59

begin. This half with. The.

29:01

Bombing of another pub by the Ira and

29:04

this was in. Birmingham.

29:06

Yes, it's. A vivid in my

29:08

my say some because it's some. Features

29:11

and Jonathan Case. Brilliant novel by growing

29:13

up in Birmingham and seventy's The Ross's

29:15

Club. Yes it as the hero, sister's

29:17

boyfriend dies in it as rights Yes

29:20

it's a brilliant books on a very

29:22

affecting moments. I'm says six

29:24

weeks after the Gulf Bombing. so it's

29:26

about five weeks of the General election

29:28

and as a Thursday in Birmingham, it's

29:30

payday in Birmingham. So the pubs a

29:33

crowded the sub basements pub called the

29:35

Tavern in the town not far from

29:37

Yeasty Station. Save face. people are familiar

29:39

with the Center Permian and a just

29:41

asked about eight fifteen the people in

29:43

that pub they hear a kind of

29:46

muffled something. And. They don't know

29:48

it. But. A bomb. Mrs. Khan

29:50

off for the bottom of the rotunda in

29:52

Bermuda. puppet the bottom much hundred few minutes'

29:54

walk away and they exactly ten minutes after

29:57

that. so there's crowds gather and

29:59

had this by now as people are moving

30:01

down the street. A bomb goes off in

30:03

the tavern in the town as well. So

30:05

it's the second bombing of the night. And

30:07

if you read the descriptions in the newspapers,

30:09

the descriptions are horrific. So a

30:11

fireman, we're seeing a torso with no

30:13

arms or legs and a spongy mess

30:15

where its head had been. The torso

30:17

was not only wriggling, it was also

30:19

through the spongy mess screaming. I mean,

30:21

it's so horrible. Yeah. So the firemen

30:24

asked the TV crews to film some of these

30:26

scenes and the TV crews refused because

30:28

they said they were too horrific. 21 people

30:31

killed, almost 200 injured, some of them very

30:33

badly. There was actually a third bomb in

30:35

a wine bar. So basically what had happened

30:37

is Yarae had put a bomb in the

30:39

first pub at the bottom of the rotunda.

30:41

Then they planned it so that as people

30:43

fled, a second bomb in

30:45

a pub just down the street would catch

30:47

them. They claimed they had telephone warnings, but

30:49

they did so with so little time before

30:51

the pub bombs went off. There was

30:53

no way that the police could act or the pubs

30:55

could be evacuated. Because it comes

30:58

so soon after the Guildford bombing, I think there's

31:00

a real sense of shock of

31:02

trauma, particularly in the city of

31:04

Birmingham, in the aftermath of all

31:06

this. There was talk at the

31:08

time briefly that this would spark

31:11

sort of sectarian or

31:13

sort of backlash politics in

31:16

Britain itself. So anti-Irish pogrom. Anti-Irish, exactly.

31:18

So there were a few isolated incidents.

31:20

So there's petrol bombs that are thrown

31:23

in an old pub in West London.

31:26

There are talks about

31:28

people attacking Irish community centres and things.

31:30

But actually by and large, it doesn't

31:32

really come to very much. The

31:34

government in the aftermath passed a Prevention

31:36

of Terrorism Act. So that allowed people

31:38

to be held for questioning for seven

31:40

days, for example. But actually looking at

31:42

it now, I think the striking thing

31:44

is actually how muted... Except

31:46

that, as with Guildford, the police

31:48

are looking to finger people they

31:51

can blame. And this again,

31:53

there's another terrible miscarriage of justice, isn't

31:55

there? Yeah, the Birmingham Six. Six

31:57

men, the Irishman who lived in Birmingham.

32:00

since the 60s. They're arrested,

32:02

confessions are beaten out of them. They were

32:05

in prison until 1991, until the

32:07

conviction was overturned. So this is a grim

32:09

background to the start of Wilson's... What is

32:11

it? Now I'm leading track. His fourth term,

32:13

his third term? It depends how you measure

32:15

it, Tom, but it's a

32:17

sort of continuation. He's won four elections.

32:19

He's won four elections out of five.

32:22

So whatever you say about Harold Wilson, he's

32:25

a very cunning operator. He's

32:27

very good at elections. Even 1970, you know,

32:30

which he lost, he actually

32:32

did well to come as... I would argue, given his

32:34

record in government, I think he actually did well to

32:36

come within a... You know, to have a chance of

32:39

winning it. So Wilson appeals

32:41

to people who want a quiet life. I think

32:43

the key to Wilson is that

32:46

people in Britain, I

32:48

think in the 60s and 70s, they were

32:50

tired. They were very

32:53

anxious about change. They

32:55

were conscious of no longer being top nation. And

32:58

I think in some parts of their minds a

33:00

lot of people didn't know that they were facing

33:02

a very difficult transformation

33:04

as the industries in which

33:06

they relied coal, shipbuilding, steel,

33:09

all those kinds of things. They were clearly struggling,

33:12

but they didn't really want to face it. Actually,

33:14

the person we've mentioned a lot who writes

33:16

this diary, Bernard Donohue, Wilson's policy chief, is

33:18

brilliant on all this in his diaries and

33:20

in his memoirs, saying, you know, we knew

33:22

that change

33:25

would have to come, but actually we were benefiting

33:28

electorally from people who wanted to put

33:30

that off. And Wilson's political

33:32

persona, I think, is one of very,

33:35

very small-c conservatism by this

33:38

point. It's basically, let's

33:40

not frighten the horses, no conflicts

33:42

with the unions, nothing that will lead

33:45

to any kind of public controversy, just

33:48

steady as she goes, and actually the

33:50

orderly management of decline to some extent,

33:53

Tom. So I suppose there are two

33:56

radical solutions to this crisis, both

33:58

of which involve a pretty dramatic

34:00

restructuring of the economy. The first would

34:02

be the one proposed by Tony Ben

34:05

that you become almost a

34:08

siege economy. So you thumb your

34:10

nose at the power of international capital. And

34:13

the other is the radical term that the

34:15

British economy does end up taking, most

34:17

famously with Mrs. Thatcher, but also, of course,

34:20

as you brilliantly point out in your book,

34:22

before that with Dennis Healy. And is there

34:24

a sense in the wake of

34:26

the election that these are really the

34:28

two alternatives, that just going

34:30

with the status quo is going to

34:33

be inadequate? No, not initially, actually, Tom.

34:35

So on the Tony Ben thing, whatever

34:38

else you say about Tony Ben, he had

34:40

a very coherent and

34:43

thought through approach

34:45

to dealing with the problem that Britain was

34:47

facing, which was, as you say, a siege

34:50

economy, protectionism, rebuild British industry behind a kind

34:52

of tariff wall. There's a contrast

34:54

with Wilson, in a way, it seems that all

34:56

this stuff about dinners and whatever

34:58

with Marcia, it's a displacement exercise. He doesn't want

35:00

to have to engage with it. Agreed.

35:04

Whereas Ben really is engaging with it. Yeah, absolutely. I

35:06

totally agree, Tom. I mean, in fact, the people who

35:08

are working on policy, the backroom boys, as it were,

35:11

they are all boys, except for Marcia, in

35:13

number 10, say again and again in this

35:15

period, 1974, 1975, 1976, he doesn't read the papers. He doesn't

35:20

engage. Inflation is heading towards 30%, but

35:23

he doesn't really want to do anything about it.

35:25

And they're really frustrated by it, actually. And so

35:28

what happens in the months immediately after the election?

35:30

Is there any sense of an election balance? No,

35:32

not really. There's actually a sort of, what is

35:34

it there? Throwing the air out of the balloon.

35:36

Yeah, the air out of a balloon. No, not

35:38

at all. So actually, by the end of October,

35:40

Dennis Healy, who had thrown all the money around to

35:42

try and win the election, meets

35:44

his colleagues and actually says to them, do what

35:46

actually? All our projections were

35:49

too optimistic. Surprise, surprise. We're going to be

35:51

borrowing probably twice as much money as we

35:53

thought we would, and that's going to rise

35:55

three times as much in a year or

35:57

so. Inflation is totally out of control now.

36:00

well into 20%. The threshold payments, which we

36:02

mentioned in the very first episode of this

36:04

series, they've now been triggered, Tom, giving you

36:06

an automatic pay rise because of inflation.

36:09

They've been triggered 11 times, so

36:11

adding to the kind of inflationary

36:13

spiral. And in November, all the

36:15

Wilson government get together. Well, the

36:17

Wilson cabinet, they get together at

36:19

Chequers. So this is the official

36:21

residence, country residence of the prime

36:24

minister. They're unbelievably pessimistic about the

36:26

economy. And the most famous line

36:28

from this meeting, a very famous line, which is

36:30

a great epitaph for the 70s comes from very

36:32

much a friend of the rest of history, Tom

36:35

James Callahan, your great hero, later

36:37

prime minister. They say, what do you think

36:39

Jim? And Jim says, well, when

36:42

I'm shaving in the morning, I say to myself that

36:44

if we're a young man, I'd emigrate. And

36:47

obviously, everybody laughs. But

36:49

he's only half joking. He says to them

36:52

in that meeting, if we carry on as

36:54

we are, we will be stripped of our

36:56

seat on the UN Security Council. Then he

36:58

goes on to say, nothing in these papers

37:00

makes me believe anything to the contrary, but

37:02

I haven't got any solution. Which obviously is

37:05

slightly sub ideal. And actually, the thing about

37:07

emigrating, loads of people are emigrating.

37:09

So David Bowie's office in New York, the

37:11

stones are still in the south of France,

37:13

I think. Roger Moore, Tom. James Bond's

37:16

left. Where does he go? So Roger Moore, I

37:18

think went in about 73, but

37:20

actually the Bond films themselves go. Because

37:23

Moonraker ends up being filmed in France at the end

37:25

of the 70s for tax reasons. But

37:27

also, lots of young people go, so many, in

37:29

fact, that for the first time in 1974, New

37:33

Zealand bring in controls

37:36

to stop so many British people

37:38

moving to New Zealand. And Australia

37:40

follows suit in 1975. So

37:44

this is unprecedented, that they are closing

37:46

their doors. I'll tell you

37:48

what some English tourists who are in Australia in

37:51

the latter half after the election is

37:53

the England cricket team. I knew this

37:55

was coming. Playing against Rodney Marsh, the

37:57

Australian wick keeper, not the Manchester City

38:00

I poorly behaved Manchester City striker from

38:02

the last episode. And they get absolutely

38:04

torn to pieces by Dennis Lilly and

38:07

Geoff Thompson, the most ferocious fast bowlers.

38:09

And at one point, the abdominal protector,

38:12

which is David Lloyd, England batsman, he

38:14

almost becomes a eunuch. Oh, no. Cracked

38:17

in two. And there, I'm

38:19

afraid, is a metaphor, isn't it? There is

38:21

a metaphor, yeah. So 1975, would you believe,

38:23

so the year after the election, was the

38:26

first year since records began that

38:28

Britain's population fell because so many people

38:30

were emigrating. So there is a solution

38:32

to the immigration crisis. What? Punch our

38:35

economy into the abyss? Yeah, the Conservatives

38:37

could totally crash the economy. Well, let

38:39

us end with the Conservatives. So just

38:41

on Wilson, just before Christmas, one of

38:44

Wilson's aides gave him a paper saying,

38:46

we are facing an economic Armageddon. As

38:48

it turned out, the

38:50

real reckoning was delayed until just after he left office

38:52

in 1976. So he leaves

38:54

office in the spring of 1976, absolutely

38:57

knackered, worn out, massive bags under

38:59

his eyes, very hang dog. And

39:01

almost immediately afterwards, there

39:03

was a huge run on the pound,

39:06

and Britain has to seek a humiliating

39:08

world record bailout international monetary fund, which

39:11

later becomes, of course, an item on the fatterite

39:13

charge sheet against the 1970s. That

39:15

and the winter discontent, which follows later in the

39:17

decade when there's kind of nonstop strikes and grave

39:20

diggers going strike and things. So just before we

39:22

do come to what happens to Edward Heath, just

39:24

the state of the economy, because people say now

39:27

that the country is in a worse mess than

39:29

it has ever been in, it's

39:31

not as bad. At least it

39:33

doesn't seem as bad as it

39:35

was back then. Is it actually the case economy

39:37

isn't quite as bad as we've been making it out to

39:39

sound? I don't think it's as bad as now as the

39:41

important summit is by any means. No, I think

39:44

the economy is obviously far from perfect now,

39:46

but we don't have inflation at 27%. Let's

39:51

fluctuate, Tom. So good times, bad times,

39:53

stock markets rise and fall. To some

39:55

degree, standing back, you might say a

39:57

little bit of this is surface growth.

40:00

But what's gone on with Britain between

40:02

the 1950s and the 1980s is much more than surface froth.

40:06

It's a massive structural change. So it's a

40:08

process of kind of deindustrialization, isn't it? Yes,

40:10

it absolutely is deindustrialization. So first into industry

40:13

and first out. And what's happening, I think,

40:15

in the 70s is that

40:17

the Wilson government and Callahan government,

40:19

like the Heath government before it,

40:22

are trying to insulate for completely

40:24

humane and understandable reasons, trying to

40:26

insulate a lot

40:29

of working people from the

40:31

consequences of that transformation. So when you

40:33

read the papers and things, they

40:35

will discuss a car factory in Scotland or

40:37

something and they will say, well, we just

40:39

have to put money into it. We have

40:41

to keep it going because if we let

40:43

it fold, thousands of people will lose their

40:46

jobs. The effect on the local community

40:48

will be terrible. We don't want

40:50

to be a government that allows that to happen. We'll find the

40:52

money. The danger with doing

40:54

that, of course, is you just put off the

40:56

evil day and you make it worse and worse.

40:58

And I think there was a definite sense by

41:00

the end of the 70s, and this is very

41:02

palpable in the memoirs and the

41:04

diets of people in the Labour government, not

41:06

the Tories, but the Labour government. There was a

41:09

sense we actually can't keep doing this forever.

41:11

Something is going to have to change at some point.

41:13

So in that sense, I think the economy, the

41:16

picture was worse in the 70s because

41:18

people knew that what would follow would

41:20

be so... ...would be brutal. Brutal, exactly,

41:23

which I don't think we have now. Well,

41:25

unless they are siding with the Benite diagnosis

41:27

and the Benite prescription. But even the Benite

41:30

prescription, you see, the Benite prescription is an

41:32

interesting, really interesting one because when it was

41:34

modelled, when people said, well, what would actually

41:36

happen if we said, soggy to the IMF

41:38

and the World Bank and whatnot, and we

41:41

sealed ourself off from the world economy to

41:43

some extent, actually, what would happen

41:45

would be probably very, very high inflation. And

41:48

even though lots of people would still be

41:50

in work, there would probably

41:52

be a massive drop in a lot

41:54

of people's living standards because imports would

41:56

be so expensive because everybody else would

41:59

put up trade barriers against Britain. So

42:01

the Benite solution was by no means

42:04

a panacea. I mean, obviously, I don't think it was

42:06

a panacea because I think it would have worked. But

42:08

I mean, the idea that you could just go on

42:10

as you were, just finding bailouts all

42:12

the time, I don't think anybody thought that

42:14

in the long run that would possibly be

42:16

a solution. Okay, well, let's just finish this

42:18

by looking at what happens with the Tories.

42:21

Because of course, the political figure who emerges from

42:23

this, she's been a bit part player really so

42:26

far, but she will become the dominant figure in

42:28

the 80s is Mrs. Thatcher,

42:30

who ends up replacing

42:32

Edward Heath as leader. Yeah,

42:35

although she shouldn't have done Tom, that's

42:37

the extraordinary thing. So first of

42:39

all, Heath has now lost, he's lost

42:41

three out of four elections, he's lost two in a

42:43

row in a single year. So he really, I mean,

42:45

he has to go. I don't think it's at all

42:47

unreasonable to think that he would want to go. But

42:50

he refuses to go. Very Ted

42:52

Heath behaviour. He's sulky. He's sort of

42:54

sullen. He doesn't want to talk to

42:56

anybody. But it strikes him as outrageous.

42:59

People would suggest that he, I

43:01

mean, he basically doesn't even want to admit that he's lost. Now,

43:05

the most likely challenger is a

43:07

man called Sir Keith Joseph, who

43:09

had been Heath's Secretary of State for

43:11

Health and Social Security. He

43:14

was an heir to a construction firm

43:16

fortune. Doesn't he come out in favour

43:18

of eugenics or something? Well, we're going

43:20

to come to this. He's

43:22

a kind of Tory Robspeare. Come.

43:25

So he's pale. He's very

43:27

priggish. He's incredibly serious. He's

43:30

incredibly conscientious. He's one of the rare Tories,

43:32

I think it's fair to say, who probably

43:34

spends about 20 hours a day

43:36

thinking about the plight of the poor. And

43:38

he will physically rise with agony.

43:42

Isn't he a mad monk? People call

43:44

him the mad monk. They call him

43:46

the mad monk. And he undergoes this

43:48

extraordinary conversion experience in the

43:50

course of 1974. So all this is going

43:53

on from the kind of

43:55

corporatist Toryism of the Heath era to

43:57

free market radicalism.

43:59

Because I believed all this

44:01

time I was a conservative. I see now

44:03

I wasn't. But just to be clear, I

44:06

mean, we today associate conservatism with free

44:09

market economics. Yes. Principally because of Mrs.

44:11

Thatcher and I guess Reagan as well.

44:13

Yeah. But actually, letting

44:15

the free market rip through

44:17

institutions and people's

44:19

livelihood and destroy industries and ways

44:21

of living that have lasted for

44:24

decades and often centuries. I mean,

44:26

that's not conservative really, is it?

44:28

Sped Heathair on the podcast. Lovely

44:30

to welcome him. No.

44:33

Well, no. But all the

44:35

choices facing people in this period, whether

44:37

on the far left, the right, whatever

44:41

are all pretty bad. Awful. They

44:43

are. So Theo has written the chat,

44:45

hence the term neoconservative. But actually, Theo, the real term

44:48

is neoliberal. So a lot of

44:50

real Tom Holland style, well, the people

44:52

that Tom was ventriloquizing, so sort of

44:54

patrician consensual Tories who fought in tank

44:56

battles in 1944. Thick

44:59

glasses. Now with thick glasses,

45:01

they would say, this isn't really conservatism

45:03

if it's free markets. This is liberalism.

45:06

This is Victorian liberalism and we don't want any

45:08

part of it in our party. And they would

45:10

later say this of Mrs. Thatcher. Now, Keith Joseph

45:12

doesn't think this. He has been converted to this

45:15

kind of neoliberalism. And he says, we've done it all

45:17

wrong. Everything that said he stood

45:19

for is nonsense. All his friends are saying, come

45:21

on, challenge Heath, put us on a free market

45:23

line, the tough medicine that is needed. And you

45:25

know what? He says, do it and Mrs. Thatcher

45:27

will be his campaign manager. And

45:29

then like Enoch Powell before him, Joseph

45:32

makes a terrible mistake of going to Birmingham to

45:34

give a speech. And he goes to the Grand

45:36

Hotel in Birmingham. And he gives this

45:38

disastrous speech where he says, and I quote, the

45:41

balance of our population at human stock

45:43

is threatened. And he says,

45:45

threatened because a high and rising proportion

45:47

of children are being born to mothers

45:49

least fitted to bring children into the

45:51

world. He says, we should make a

45:53

massive effort to get working class women to

45:56

use more birth control to stop them having children.

45:58

He says, because if we don't, it'll mean the

46:00

degeneration of Britain. The degeneration of the racial

46:02

stock. Yeah. Kind of verging on saying that.

46:04

Well, he doesn't use the words racial stock.

46:06

I think it's fair to say Tom and

46:08

I think he would be appalled. I mean,

46:10

he's Jewish himself. Yes, I don't know. Harold

46:12

McMillan rather cruelly said he was the only

46:14

boring Jew I've ever known. Yes. So

46:18

I think a lot of people are

46:20

absolutely appalled by this. They think it's the most

46:22

terrible. Yes. Private eye, which we

46:24

mentioned a few times the satirical magazine,

46:26

because of his enthusiasm for birth control

46:28

took to calling him Sashi, instead of

46:30

Zaki. And I think people

46:33

just thought he's gone mad, you

46:36

know, and he basically thinks, Oh,

46:38

I've made a terrible mistake. And he

46:40

effectively bows out. He goes around the House of Commons

46:42

in November. So it's only six weeks or so after

46:44

the election saying to people, Oh,

46:47

I can't, I'm not going to do it.

46:49

Because also he's not really cut out to be

46:51

a leader anyway. He's a kind of Prince Hamlet

46:53

figure, isn't he? He is an absolute he's dithering

46:55

delays. Yes. intellectual. People would often say

46:58

of him, he's the only person you they would

47:00

meet who in meetings would genuinely strike his own

47:02

head very hard when he was changing his mind,

47:04

like pummel his head and stuff, which they found

47:06

disconcerting. So any on the 21st of

47:09

November, he goes into the office of his

47:11

campaign manager. And he says,

47:13

Margaret, I'm not going to do it. And

47:15

it's at that point, there's no doubt that

47:17

it hadn't occurred to her before them, because she

47:19

wants to be chancellor, not Prime Minister. It's

47:21

at that point that she said to him, well,

47:24

if you're not going to stand I will and

47:26

then she goes home and she says to Dennis,

47:28

her husband, I'm actually gonna stand myself for the

47:30

Tory leadership against Teddy. And Dennis said, you must

47:32

be out of your mind. You

47:35

haven't got a hope. And

47:38

so four days later, she ignores Dennis, obviously,

47:40

four days later, she goes to see Teddy

47:43

in his office and she says to him,

47:45

Ted, I'm going to stand against you for

47:47

the leadership or whatever. And Teddy, all he says

47:49

is you'll lose and

47:52

Tom, the rest is

47:55

history. Brilliant. So,

47:58

so much more to come. The seven the

48:00

Labour government. We should get into

48:02

that next year because next year will be the

48:04

anniversary Tom of her becoming Tory leader. Very exciting.

48:07

So the perfect opportunity to do a series on

48:09

the late seven to say James Canahan. I mean

48:11

the public, I think, I mean they're desperate to

48:13

hear a series of podcasts about James Canahan. People

48:16

have been repeatedly demanding it and so it will

48:18

come. So Dominic, thanks so much. We hope that

48:20

you have all enjoyed that. I mean, I have

48:22

to say it kind of cheers me up. I,

48:25

you know, I feel depressed about the state of the country. And I kind

48:27

of think, well, it's not as bad as it could

48:29

have been. Tom, it's nice to

48:31

end a podcast. Are you feeling more cheerful?

48:33

Yeah. So on that cheery note, thank you

48:35

very much for listening and bye bye.