247. Hopes dashed

After talking last week about his government’s achievements in the social sphere, this episode looks at the difficulties Wilson faced in economics and foreign affairs.

One way Wilson explored to address economic problems was to make a second application for Britain’s entry to the Common market, then called the European Economic Community and now the European Union. However, like Macmillan before him, he ran into the immovable obstacle of de Gaulle, despite believing like Trump that he could overcome opposition by personal conversation with political leaders.

He had the same disappointment in personal negotiations twice more. Once waswith the Rhodesian Prime Minister, Ian Smith, the second in his offer to mediate over the Vietnam War between US President Johnson and the Soviet Premier Kosygin.

He did have some success, though it attracted him more ridicule than admiration, in the military intervention he authorised on the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla and which came to be mocked as ‘the Bay of Piglets’.

On the domestic front he’d long balanced the leadership ambitions of Jim Callaghan against those of George Brown. After Brown’s departure, he did the same with Callaghan and Roy Jenkins.

His hold on office came under threat as his public credibility sank. The threat intensified following the controversy over the proposals to control union activity through the courts, outlined in the paper ‘In Place of Strife’. Surprisingly advanced by a leftwinger, Barbara Castle, and backed by Wilson, it seemed to fly in the face of the rationale of Labour’s very existence, founded as it had been to defend the unions.

Eventually the proposals were dropped.

Then with better economic news Labour began to climb in the polls. Encouraged, Wilson called a general election in June 1970. But it turned out that any optimism generated by the opinion pollsters was illusory.

Ted Heath’s Conservatives won the election and formed a new government.

Incidentally, the German translation of the podcast has now moved past the Tudors and is now dealing with the Stuarts. It’s available at:

https://open.spotify.com/show/08M357CvtiWJsnEGyxitco?si=64613c2919df4a27

Illustration: the kind of military action we can all appreciate. British forces restoring order in Anguilla in the 1969 ‘Bay of Piglets’ operation (from Anguilla Police Unit 1969... By: Taff Bowen (AKA "Dickiebo"))

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License