more coalition-minded of my colleagues, I believed that the job of Oppositions is generally to oppose. We had a fundamentally different approach from that of the Government and our main duty was to explain it and persuade the country of its merits. Secondly, it was dangerous to make an offer of cooperation without having thought through clearly in advance whether we actually wanted it accepted or not. Probably nothing which went to the heart of the problem would — or indeed could — be accepted by Jim Callaghan’s Government. There was, therefore, a risk that in order to make a credible offer of support, we would have to set our sights too low as regards measures of reform. And if the Government then
That evening — Monday 15 January — I called a Steering Committee meeting. Most of my senior colleagues favoured the idea of a conditional offer and by this stage I had come round to the idea myself. Reforms were essential; and if the Government were prepared to introduce the necessary measures, how could we oppose them? By offering help we enhanced our moral authority. I believed — as did most of the supporters of the idea — that the offer should be set at a level which, though abundantly justified by events, would be unlikely to be accepted by the Government. This was a difficult matter to judge in detail: the Labour Party might just be persuaded to agree to the negotiation of no-strike agreements in essential services, the payment by the taxpayer of the cost of secret ballots in trade unions and even a code of practice to end secondary picketing — though the last was doubtful. Equally, I was clear that if the Government did accept, we were honour-bound to keep our side of the bargain. For me, however, there was an additional and very important consideration. By agreeing to offer cooperation with the Government on selected measures, Jim Prior and his supporters would find it impossible to refuse support to those same measures if and when a Conservative Government introduced them.
The upshot was that the Steering Committee agreed that the Government could rely on Conservative support if it took firmer action on picketing (to get essential supplies moving), legislated to outlaw secondary picketing and to encourage secret ballots for union elections, and if it made efforts to negotiate non-strike agreements in essential industries. Events are a powerful advocate.
I opened the debate the following day. I began by describing the crisis. Transport of goods by road was widely disrupted, in many cases due to secondary picketing of firms and operators not involved in the actual disputes. British Rail had issued a brief statement: ‘There are no trains today.’ The CBI had reported that many firms were being strangled, due to shortage of materials and inability to move finished goods. There was trouble at the ports, adding to the problems of exporters. At least 125,000 people had been laid off already and the figure was expected to reach a million by the end of the week. The food industry, in particular, was in a shambolic state, with growing shortages of basic supplies like edible oils, yeast, salt and sugar. And all this on top of a winter of strikes — strikes by tanker drivers, bakers, staff at old people’s homes and hospitals; strikes in the press and broadcasting, airports and car plants; a strike of gravediggers.
I pulled no punches in the speech. I made the point put to me by George Brown that the unions had been falling more and more under the control of left-wing militancy. I reminded the archmoderate Shirley Williams that she had joined the Grunwick picket line. I made the conditional offer of support agreed in the Steering Committee, and I also made it a condition of cooperation that the Government should act on the closed shop; I felt too strongly on this subject not to include it.
The Prime Minister spoke next. He began his reply in a surprising way:
I congratulate the Right Honourable lady on a most effective parliamentary performance. It was in the best manner of our debates and the style in which it was delivered was one of which the Right Honourable lady can be proud.
It was a good start. But all that the Prime Minister then had to offer in the body of his speech were further concessions to the unions — exemptions from the 5 per cent pay limit, tighter price controls and extension of the principle of ‘comparability’, under which public sector workers could expect more money. All these were intended as inducements to the unions to sign up to a new pay policy. But he signally failed to address what everyone except the far Left considered the main problem, excessive trade union power.
To my offer the Prime Minister made no direct reply. He had clearly been wrong-footed. The question now was whether I should repeat the offer the following evening in our Party Political Broadcast — or limit myself to attacking the Government’s paralysis and pledging that a Conservative Government would reform trade union law.
I was still uneasy, and toughened the script when I saw it the following day. But after all, the offer had already been made, and the higher the profile we gave it, the more tightly it would bind reluctant colleagues and the more public support we would gain. So we went ahead, filming it in my room at the House of Commons. Again, the Government made no direct reply.
In any case, by now the whole political atmosphere had been transformed. From trailing the Labour Party by several percentage points in the opinion polls before my interview with Brian Walden, we had now opened up a twenty-point lead. From being a liability, our perceived willingness to take on the trade union militants had become an advantage. Within the Shadow Cabinet, the opposition from people like Jim Prior and Ian Gilmour to the approach which Keith Joseph, Geoffrey Howe and I wanted was effectively silenced — for the time being at least. Personally, I was conscious that in some strange way I was instinctively speaking and feeling in harmony with the great majority of the population. Such moments are as unforgettable as they are rare. They must be seized to change history.
THE FALL OF THE GOVERNMENT
But now Banquo’s ghost came back to haunt the Labour Government. Devolution, which they had embraced solely as a means of staying in power with support from the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, returned to grimace and gibber at Jim Callaghan at his lowest point. Following the defeat of the Scotland and Wales Bill in early 1977 Labour had reintroduced devolution legislation in the form of separate Bills for Scotland and Wales, with provision for referenda in each country before they came into effect. Backbench dissent on their own side led to the passage of a number of amendments, including the crucial additional requirement that a minimum of 40 per cent of those eligible to vote had to support devolution in each case. Although I had not publicly campaigned for a ‘No’ vote in the referenda in Scotland and Wales, that was the result I wanted. When the vote took place on 1 March 1979 in Scotland a bare majority of those voting was in favour — well below the required 40 per cent of the total electorate — and in Wales a large majority of those who voted rejected the proposal. For the moment, devolution was dead: I did not mourn it.
From this point on it seemed likely, though not certain, that the Government would be unable to continue in office; but the circumstances under which a general election would occur were far from predictable. The Prime Minister sought desperately to spin out discussion about devolution rather than go ahead immediately with the repeal of the Devolution Acts. But his potential allies were preparing to desert. The SNP now had no reason to keep Labour in office and wanted an early confidence motion. The Liberals were keen on an early election, even though their standing in the opinion polls was weak; this was principally in order to avoid the embarrassment of the forthcoming trial of their former Leader, Jeremy Thorpe, on a charge of conspiracy to murder, of which he was later acquitted. Admittedly, the Welsh Nationalists, who were more of a socialist party than their Scottish equivalents, might still be persuadable.
That meant that the Northern Irish MPs — ten Ulster Unionists, one member of the Social Democratic and Liberal Party (SDLP) and one Independent Republican — were likely to be decisive. Gerry Fitt, the SDLP Member, had been alienated from the Government by their attempts to court the Ulster Unionists with additional seats for the Province. Frank Maguire, the Independent Republican, was entirely unpredictable. A majority of the Ulster Unionists had been prepared to keep the Government in office until the legislation increasing the representation of Northern Ireland had passed through Parliament: but this it had done by 15 March. There was now much public talk of Unionist demands for a gas pipeline to link the Province to the natural gas network on the mainland and the
