Unit 1.4 Flashcards
John Major
From a working-class background in Surrey.
He left school at the age of 16 but worked his way up to executive level in the banking industry. He became a Conservative councillor in the 1970s and was elected as an MP for Huntingdonshire in 1979. He joined Thatcher’s cabinet as Chief Secretary of the Treasury in 1987, and was promoted to Foreign Secretary and then Chancellor in 1989 before becoming prime minister in 1990.
-Major won clearly in the leadership election and was young and different to previous PMs. However, was portrayed as a grey man by satirists and Spitting Image.
-John Major was Thatcher’s choice of successor and one key reason for Major’s rise to the leadership was that Thatcherites saw him as one of them. In fact, this view of John Major was not especially accurate. Major’s natural instincts were to unify the party. This would be a difficult job; there was ongoing hostility to Michael Heseltine and a fierce determination amongst some to take revenge against those who had betrayed Maggie’. Split between ‘wets’ and ‘dries’.
Major’s Initial Action
John Major’s first big task involved foreign affairs and Europe. Britain was already fighting the First Gulf War, which reached a successful conclusion in March 1991. Major then turned his attention to Europe, making a speech that set out his aim to see Britain take a place at the very heart of Europe. Major and his supporters hoped that it would be possible to follow a middle way on Europe. At home Major needed to deal with the poll tax. Many wanted him to scrap it immediately but this risked splitting the party. Only in November 1991, after very lengthy discussions, was the poll tax abandoned in favour of the new council tax. Doing this meant that £1.5 billion had been wasted but it allowed Major to get away from an unpopular policy that could be blamed on his predecessor.
1992 Election
Major called the election in March 1992, almost the last possible moment before the end of the five-year parliamentary term. The opinion polls placed the Conservatives on an average 29 per cent, with Labour ahead on 41 per cent and the Liberals at 15 per cent. Most observers predicted a Labour victory. It seemed as though defeat was inevitable.
John Major himself, however, was surprisingly upbeat and his optimism was vindicated. Towards the end of the longer than usual election campaign, opinion swung back towards the Conservatives.
The Conservatives ran a good campaign. John Major won a lot of respect for his old-fashioned soapbox’ politics, making impromptu speeches on the street in towns like Luton, standing on his soapbox. Although people blamed the Conservatives for the economic recession, they were still seen as the party best able to get the country out of the mess.
Elections are always lost as well as won. In 1992, Labour’s weaknesses mattered as much as the strengths of the Conservative campaign. Many voters probably just did not feel Labour had reformed enough; memories of the 1980s were still too strong.
Con - 336 seats, 51.6% votes
Lab- 271 seats, 41.6%
Lib-20 seats, 3.1 % votes
1992 election - Conservative strengths
-The Sun newspaper was sufficiently convinced to switch its support from Labour to Conservative. This defection to the Conservatives of one of the main voices of popular opinion was a blow to Labour and helped explain the late and decisive swing to John Major.
-John Major won a lot of respect for his old fashioned ‘soapbox politics’.
-From mid-1991 to comy 992, unemployment rose from 1.6 million to 2.6 million. Many homeo high were trapped in negative equity (having to repay mortgages that were higher than the current value of their homes).
Many had their homes repossessed. Unlike in the recession of the early 1980s which largely hit working-class and northern communities, this affected traditional Tory voters.
With an election imminent, Major’s government resorted to high public spending. Falfoment borrowing was forced due to rising unemployment, but huge government borrowing was used for subsidies on transport and increased spending on the NHS. Although able to improve image by increasing spending the negatives suggest it was more about labour weaknesses than conservatives strengths.
1992 election - Labour weaknesses
-The Labour Party led by Neil Kinnock conducted a poorly judged campaign. Having in the early part of the campaign successfully promoted itself as the caring party, it assumed from the opinion polls that it was going to win. This was evident in an ill-conceived rally in Sheffield in the week before the election. Aping the razzmatazz style of US politics, the Labour campaigners put on an extravaganza with blaring music and announcements and spotlights picking out shadow cabinet members who walked to the platform through ranks of cheering admirers. The climax came with Neil Kinnock bounding up to the rostrum and exchanging repetitive shouts with audience as if he were at an American convention. Kinnock later admitted that the triumphalism had been both premature and rather tasteless, although he disputed that it had cost Labour the election.
-More serious damage was done by Labour presenting a shadow budget that seemed to threaten large increases in taxation, which John Major was able to exploit by literally standing on a soap-box and suggesting in a homely way that only the Conservatives could be trusted to run the economy.
Economic Situation before 1992
From mid-1991 to early 1992, unemployment rose from 1.6 million to 2.6 million. Many homeowners were trapped in negative equity (having to repay mortgages that were higher than the current value of their homes).
Many had their homes repossessed. Unlike in the recession of the early 1980s which largely hit working-class and northern communities, this affected traditional Tory voters.
With an election imminent, Major’s government resorted to high public spending. Half of this spending was forced, as a result of rising unemployment, but huge government borrowing was used for subsidies on transport and increased spending on the NHS.
Black Wednesday - what happenened
Within a few months of winning the general election, Major’s government suffered a severe crisis and Britain was forced to leave the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). What became known as Black Wednesday came to dominate the rest of Major’s premiership.
Britain joined the ERM in 1990 when Thatcher was persuaded that it would help to combat inflation which was starting to rise. The ERM required Britain to maintain a fixed rate of exchange (2.95 German marks to the pound) with a narrow band allowed for fluctuations.This was unrealistically high and caused British exports to become overpriced. By September 1992, the British currency (together with several other ERM currencies) came under pressure. International bankers, sensing that the pound sterling was overvalued, began to speculate against it on the money markets.The pound began to fall sharply. In a desperate effort to maintain the pound at the level required by the ERM, Norman Lamont, the chancellor of the exchequer, raised interest levels from ten per cent to fifteen per cent and sold off €30 billion of the UK’s foreign reserves. It was all to no avail. The pressure on the pound was too great. Major’s government was determined to avoid any devaluation of the pound and to remain within the ERM. But despite all the government’s efforts, the pound continued to sink. Major’s government did the only thing it could; on
16 September 1992, known afterwards as ‘Black Wednesday, at 7pm, Norman Lamont announced the decision to leave the ERM live on television.
Black Wednesday - Short term impacts
- The effects of Black Wednesday on the British economy proved much less catastrophic than was feared at the time. Within a relatively short time, the economy stabilised and it could be seen that leaving the ERM had many beneficial effects. The political consequences, however, were disastrous for the Conservative government. The long-standing Conservative electoral asset of being trusted on the economy was thrown away. There was a steep drop in support for the Conservatives in opinion polls. John Major’s personal authority was badly weakened. He was fiercely criticised by newspapers that had previously supported him. The Labour Party shot ahead in the polls, gaining a 15 point lead. Many observers, including John Major himself, looked back at the events of
16 September 1992 as the beginning of the end. - Britain’s economic situation started to improve almost immediately after Black Wednesday in 1992. Leaving the ERM prevented Britain from having to keep high interest rates to protect the stability of sterling and it allowed exchange rates to float downwards, which helped British exporters. Unemployment rates slowed down and the housing market began to pick up. At the same time the American economy was coming out of recession and world trade was expanding. The British economy was also benefiting from the impact of financial deregulation and flexible working practices which the Conservative Party had introduced since 1979. In comparison, the German economy was struggling with the huge costs of unification and had sluggish growth rates compared with Britain.
- The case for Britain’s becoming involved in European monetary union was weakened.
- The argument of the Euro-sceptics against deeper integration with Europe was strengthened.
- Cabinet divisions widened between Euro-sceptics, principally Peter Lilley, Michael Portillo and Michael Howard, and pro-Europeans, principally Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine and Douglas Hurd.
Black Wednesday - Long term impacts
-By 1997 most economic indicators were positive, and Unemployment was down. Productivity was up, though not by much. Consumer spending went up. Car ownership increased. House prices rose and negative equity became a thing of the past. Business was supportive of government policies. Yet people were surprisingly reluctant to give Majors government credit for this. The ‘feel-good factor’ was missing.
-Some observers have called the event ‘White Wednesday’, a reference to the fact that, freed from its artificial ties, the pound began to recover. By 1996 the exchange rate of the pound was DM3, a higher rate than when the pound was in the ERM. What was true of finance was also true of the economy overall.
Britain’s growth rate outperformed that of its European partners. It prompted the Euro-sceptics to question again the supposed benefits of EU membership. Norman Lamont later remarked ‘I know of no single benefit which has come to Britain solely because of its membership of Europe.’
These longer term effects were obviously of no immediate benefit to John Major’s government. The truth was that Black Wednesday left its mark on the remainder of his administration to 1997. A divided Cabinet, uncertainty about Europe, a public who now doubted the government’s financial competence and a Labour Party recovering its confidence: these were the legacies of the ERM crisis.
Majors Unpopular Political Policies - Privatisation
A number of other Conservative policies in the 1990s also proved controversial and confirmed the feeling that the Conservative government was prone to crisis. Majors government continued the policy of privatisation. The coal industry was privatised in 1994, the railways in 1996. The government also set about privatising the Post Office but ran into opposition and eventually abandoned the scheme due to public concern. Major also introduced the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). These were public-private partnerships that meant private companies would fund infrastructure improvements and then deliver public services that the State would pay for over the length of the contract.
Majors Unpopular Political Policies - Citizens Charter
Major also introduced the Citizen’s Charter in 1991. This was an attempt to give public service users more power over the quality of the services they received by providing information about the standards they should expect. For example, in education there would be more testing and schools would publish the results. However, some elements such as the ‘Cones Hotline’ - a phone number motorists could call if motorway lanes were closed off without any sign of roadworks - became targets of the satire.
Majors Unpopular Political Policies - Miners
Pit closures continued. In 1991 Heseltine announced the closure of 31 pits including some in Nottinghamshire; this was seen as a poor reward by Conservatives who remembered that it was the Nottinghamshire miners who had stood against Scargill. The outcry forced Heseltine into a U-turn in the short term though eventually, the closures went ahead. Major was seen to be continuing Thatcherite policies, closing mines and privatising. Heseltine had also gone back on previous words that Nottingham mines would not be closed following their stand in strikes.
Majors Unpopular Political Policies - BSE (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy)
Major’s government also had to deal with the BSE (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy) crisis, better known as Mad Cow Disease. This had been first identified in the mid-1980s but was recognised as a potential threat to human health in 1996. This led to British beef being banned in Europe.
None of these policies or events in themselves appears to be big enough to undermine a government’s reputation. But together, and combined with the other issues discussed in this chapter, they helped to cement an image of incompetence and things going wrong.
John Major - Back to Basics
In 1993, John Major decided to relaunch his leadership and the party.
At the annual party conference, he gave a speech that outlined his anger at those Tory MPs who were causing issues around Europe (among other things)
He also stated a need to return to return to core British values that were still alive, it was time to get Back To Basics, to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting a responsibility for yourself and your family and not shuffling off on other people and the state.
Political sleaze, scandals and satire - Cash for Questions
Finally, the so-called ‘Cash-for-questions affair erupted; it was very damaging to the Major government because it lasted such a long time and kept ‘Tory sleaze in the news right through the 1997 election campaign. The Cash-for-questions affair arose when Neil Hamilton and other Conservative MPs were accused of accepting money in return for lobbying (asking questions in Parliament) on behalf of the controversial owner of Harrods, Mohammed Al Fayed. Hamilton was ruined by losing a very public libel case, but refused to resign, to the intense irritation of John Major. In the 1997 election, Hamilton was humiliatingly defeated by an independent candidate, the former BBC journalist Martin Bell, who made ‘sleaze’ the keynote of his campaign.
Political sleaze, scandals and satire - Minister sex scandals and deaths
Part of the reason that Major’s government found it difficult to claim credit when things went right is that it became associated with things going wrong. This was partly because of the ERM crisis. But this perception was strengthened by scandals and accusations of Tory sleaze that dogged Major’s years in office. There were more than a dozen sex scandals involving MPs having extramarital affairs including two cabinet ministers, David Mellor and Tim Yeo, both of whom were forced to resign.
-David Mellor resigned as National Heritage secretary in September 1992, following an affair. Although Mellor’s resignation antedated John Major’s “Back to Basics” speech by more than a year, the media were quick to link the new campaign to the scandal.
-In December 1993 it was revealed that Tim Yeo, Minister for the Environment and Countryside, had fathered an illegitimate child, despite having publicly talked of the need to “reduce broken families and the number of single parents”; he later resigned in January 1994.
-On 7 February 1994 the Conservative MP Stephen Milligan was found dead on his kitchen table as a result of auto-erotic asphyxiation, wearing only a pair of women’s stockings and suspenders, with his head covered and an orange segment in his mouth. According to the diary of his long-time friend, the Conservative MP Gyles Brandreth, Milligan had just been offered promotion to a ministerial job earlier that day, and Brandreth speculated that Milligan had gone home “to celebrate”.
-Two leading Conservatives, the novelist Jeffrey Archer and the former minister Jonathan Aitken, were convicted of perjury.
Political sleaze, scandals and satire - Arms to Iraq
Other scandals centred on corruption. In 1994, the Scott Enquiry, set up by Major to investigate illegal arms dealing, proved that government ministers had broken the rules and been ‘economical with the truth’ in enabling the arms company Matrix Churchill to supply arms components to Iraq. British companies and government officials were involved in the export of arms and dual-use technology to Iraq, raising questions about the ethics of such deals.
Political sleaze, scandals and satire - Media Satire
The sleaze and scandals made the Major government ripe for satire. Private Eye created an Adrian Mole spoof, The Secret Diary of John Major aged 47 and three-quarters. The puppeteers of Spitting Image presented Major as dull and boring. The Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell caricatured him as a grey superhero wearing his Y-fronts on top of his trousers. None of this satire was vicious and Major remained personally more popular than his party; but the image of Major as a well-meaning but inadequate leader stuck to him.
Internal Divisions in the Conservative Party
-After Thatchers decisive end to her reign, it was hoped that Major would prove able to bring the Conservatives back together,
-This proved a forlorn hope.
-Disaffected cabinet ministers began to brief against Major and he faced a leadership challenge in 1995.
-He defeated John Redwood decisively and clung on to power. 89 MPs voted against Major (he had a majority of 20, had effectively lost majority)
-Thatcher didn’t help by publishing her memoirs that were less than positive about Major.
-She even seemed more positive about the new Labour leader Tony Blair
-Major hit out at Tory minsters calling 3 of them “Bastards”, the Eurosceptic ministers were not named, but almost certainly Michael Howard, Peter Lilley and Michael Portillo came within minutes of the vote of confidence which kept him in office.
Northern Ireland and John Major - timeline
-In 1993 the government were told that Sinn Fein were willing to discuss peace.
-Backed by Ireland and America’s leaders, these dialogues went on and 2 key events happened
-1993 – Joint Downing Street Declaration between UK and Ireland government to bring peace to Northern Ireland
-1994 – IRA ceasefire
Northern Ireland and John Major - Situation worsening in Northern Ireland 1987 - 1993
Thatcher’s policy towards Northern Ireland did not change in the final years of her administration. The government banned organisations which were believed to support terrorist activities from broadcasting in Britain; broadcasters got around this ban by employing actors to read the words of those affected.
However, the States activities during the Troubles also came under scrutiny. There were accusations of a shoot to kill’ policy after three IRA members were killed by the SAS (Special Air Service, one of the British military’s Special Forces) in Gibraltar in 1988; high-profile miscarriages of justice such as the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four were revealed. Meanwhile the atrocities continued; loyalists and republicans engaged in ‘tit for tat’ killings and the IRA started to target mainland Britain.
Major had been in office for only two months when, early in 1991, in its most audacious act yet, the IRA fired mortar bombs at 10 Downing Street from a
parked van. This was the prelude to a sustained IRA bombing campaign in Britain.
* In March 1993, a boy of three and another twelve people were killed and 50 injured by bombs left in litterbins in a shopping mall in Warrington,Cheshire.
* In April, one person was killed and 40 were injured by a bomb planted in a lorry in Bishopsgate in the City of London.
* This bomb also caused over a billion pounds worth of damage to a number of bank and office premises, most notably the NatWest Tower (called Tower 42 since 2015).
The anger among ordinary people at these brutalities led to large peace rallies in London, Belfast and Dublin. Aware of how public opinion was turning against
them on both sides of the Irish Sea, the IRA put out disclaimers saying that the deaths had not been intended and that it was the fault of the British police,
who had failed to act on the detailed forewarnings that the IRA had given themabout the location of the bombs.
The Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four
The Guildford Four were jailed in 1975 for life for the bombing of 2 Guildford pubs in which 5 people died. The verdict was overturned in 1989. The Birmingham Six were jailed in 1975 for life for the bombing of 2 Birmingham pubs in which 21 people were killed. The verdict was overturned in 1991. Wrongful convictions.
Northern Ireland and John Major - John Majors Actions - Downing Street Declaration
Although the times scarcely seemed promising for a new political initiative, the Irish Republic and the UK had as premiers at this point two men of very similar character and temperament. Albert Reynolds and John Major shared an unflappable, practical attitude which enabled them quickly to agree on a common approach towards improving the chances of peace. The outcome of their agreement was the Downing Street Declaration, whose chief features were as follows:
- The British government announced that it had ‘no selfish or strategic interest in Northern Ireland’; its sole concern was to accede to the democratically expressed wishes of the people there.
- It also accepted that it was for the people of the island of Ireland alone, North and South, to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish
- Reynolds declared that the Irish Republic accepted the right of the majority in Northern Ireland to decide its future and that, if a democratic settlement
could be achieved there, the South was prepared to drop its traditional claim that Northern Ireland was part of the Republic.
Northern Ireland and John Major - John Majors Actions - Ceasefire 1994
Unofficial contacts between the British government and Sinn Féin eventually convinced the IRA that the declaration had indeed recognised the key republican and nationalist positions on the status of Northern Ireland and that Britain was not committed to indefinite control of the province. This was sufficient for the IRA to declare a ceasefire in August 1994.
The big issue was whether the loyalist paramilitary units could be persuaded to do the same. It was clear that the IRA would not keep the ceasefire for long if it remained a one-sided affair. The government’s fear was that the precise point that had temporarily pacified the IRA, Britain’s willingness eventually to allow Northern Ireland to decide its own status, might be seen by the unionists as a sell-out. Major took the step of assuring them that the British government had no intention of forcing the North into a united Ireland. This proved sufficient
for the time being to quell unionist fears. In October 1994 the loyalist units announced that they would be observing their own ceasefire.
For the first time since the troubles had reignited in late 1960s, the Northern Ireland sides were at peace. Given all the bitterness that had gone before, it could be only a fragile peace and how long it would hold depended on how long the IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries considered it served their respective interests.
The ceasefire did not hold; between 1996(London +Manchester bombing) and 1998 there were frequent outbursts of renewed violence. The basic fact was that the two sets of paramilitaries did
not trust each other.