The Rest Is History - 420. Britain in 1974: Thatcher Enters the Ring (Part 4)

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

The horrific Guildford Pub Bombings of Saturday 5th October 1974 sent shockwaves through Britain, worsening the sense of crisis sweeping through the nation. It cast a dark shadow over the election campaign due to take place five days later. The future had rarely seemed grimmer, with a general sense of moral and economic panic, weariness and depression. For the fourth time, Labour’s Harold Wilson and the Conservative’s Edward Heath faced off, with Wilson able to scrape a three-seat majority. But could Wilson really revive the nation? Or would it be up to the new figure emerging from the Conservative Party, a certain Margaret Thatcher… Join Dominic and Tom for the conclusion to their series on one of the maddest years in British history, 1974. With dysfunctional governments, dark conspiracies, economic meltdown and ongoing terrorist attacks, can Britain survive the year? *The Rest Is History LIVE in 2024* Tom and Dominic are back onstage this summer, at Hampton Court Palace in London!  Buy your tickets here: therestishistory.com Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Saturday 5th October 1974 was a big night for Paul Cray and Carol Burns. By coincidence, their birthdays fell on the same day, and Paul, who was due to turn 22, thought it would be nice to have a little party. Only a few weeks earlier, Carol, three years his junior, had been accepted into the Women's Royal Army Corps, so they had something special to celebrate.

She chose the venue, a pub not far from her barracks, recommended by some of her new friends who used to meet their boyfriends there on Saturday nights. Meanwhile, Paul had a surprise up his sleeve. Unbeknown to Carol, he had invited her parents down from Boreham Wood for the evening, and when she left headquarters, all three of them were waiting outside to greet her. They walked on to the pub, the Horse and Groom in Guildford, which was already filling up. The atmosphere was noisy, happy. Many of the drinkers were soldiers and their girlfriends, enjoying a night out. The Burns family found a table in an alcove by the jukebox. Carol disappeared to the toilet for a minute or two.

When she came back, Paul had moved up and taken her seat, so she slipped in beside him. It was almost nine o'clock. Then, quite suddenly, there was a gigantic bang and everything went black. The next thing Carol knew, she was lying on the ground, her ears full of buzzing, her mouth full of smoke and dust. Someone was lying on the floor beside me, she said later. It was Paul. So Dominic, that is from your history of Britain in 1974 to 1979, Seasons in the Sun. And it describes what has been commemorated as the Guildford Pub bombing.

So Paul is dead? Yes. Paul was killed straight away. He's one of five people killed that evening, 5th of October, 1974. There was a bomb in the alcove that you mentioned by the jukebox that had been planted by the Provisional IRA. It's a reminder of how chance matters in history because when Carol went to the toilet, they moved places. If she was still sitting where she had been, she would have been killed, not Paul. Her parents were very badly injured. Her father, I think, was in a coma for five weeks.

Four other people were killed, 68 people injured. Two of the people who died were teenagers, teenage girls who'd also joined the Women's Royal Army Corps, and two teenage boys, Scots Guards, Sir William Forsyth and James Hunter, who were friends from the same street in Renfrewshire, who had only joined up a month beforehand. And the Guildford pub bombing sent an absolute shockwave through Britain. There have been many bombings, of course, in Northern Ireland in the last couple of years, but this was seen as something, a bomb in a pub in Britain, in the home counties, was seen as unbelievably shocking. And of course, what made it more shocking, Tom, was that afterwards, the police charged four innocent people

who went to prison for 15 years. Yeah, because that's what it's chiefly remembered for now, isn't it? Yes. And almost certainly the culprits were a group called the Balcombe Street Gang, who were a provisional IRA unit who were kind of on the loose in England in 1974 and 1975, and who actually said at their trial in 1977,

there were innocent people in prison for the Guildford pub bombing, but the police and someone didn't listen. So yeah, it's a pretty shocking story. And we're at the final episode of this 1974 marathon, and this is five days before the general election campaign, the second general election in 1974, which is where we ended, didn't we, last time? Harold Wilson has decided on the showdown with Ted Heath to try and give himself the mandate, because he's been leading a minority government. And this sort of darkness overshadows the election. And you described in the previous episode how Wilson is seen by many people on the right as so illegitimate as actually to be potentially a Soviet mole. People on the left are talking with some justification of the possibility of a right-wing coup.

Yes. So there is a sense of extreme polarisation in the country. And then to have this act of brutal violence, as you say, in the home counties, in Surrey, one of the richest and most prosperous areas in Britain. I assume then that it must have radically enhanced the sense that many people have that this is a state of crisis like none that Britain has faced since the war? I think what it doesn't do is to create a sort of what you might call a histrionic or extreme reaction. Actually, what it adds to is a sense, I think, of weariness, of depression. Because don't forget, the conflict in Northern

Ireland has been going on since the late 1960s. So we're into kind of year five a bit now. And most people don't understand it. Most people in Great Britain don't understand it. They don't really care, to be brutally honest. But they are horrified by it and by the fact that it is, as they see it, seeping into the life of... So the Times actually says that, doesn't it? It says that no election since the war had been held in such a mood of public uncertainty

and depression. So depression rather than anger. Yes. I mean, there is anger, as we will see later on. There are people who are calling for the death penalty for terrorists because the death penalty had been done away with just a few years earlier. But I think it adds to a sense of kind of world weariness, of shabbiness, of ineffectual government, and a sense of helplessness, actually, I guess is the word, Tom, that Britain is now, having been for so long the great actor on the world stage, that for the first time, I think, in the mid-1970s, people realised that Britain is actually on the receiving end of change and of major geopolitical developments.

And there's a sense of impotence, I think, impotence of the government to do anything about Northern Ireland, but impotence to deal with inflation or the pace of globalisation and de-industrialisation and all of these kinds of things. And is there a sense also of, I might almost say boredom, tedium, a sense that this is just an endless cycle of two rather shop-soiled leaders in the form of Wilson and Heath? Neither of them are inspirational. Neither of them really seem to promise a kind of radical change. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. So, Wilson, who we talked about a lot last time, the sort of chaotics, I mean, some people might think we were being a bit harsh on Wilson, that sort of chaotic six-month period after he became

Prime Minister. But actually, the chaos really continues into the election campaign. So, the very first meeting of his election team tom has to be moved from room to room because marcia williams who played such a leading role in the last episode she's very keen that her nemesis in his high command to her joe haynes his press secretary and bernard donahue is his policy chief i mean to be fair they have been plotting to murder her they have right but But they've been discussing plotting to murder her. They haven't actually been plotting. I think that's semantic.

She doesn't want them to come to the meetings. She keeps changing the room behind their back. Right. So that sort of behavior. Also, Wilson gets tanked up on brandy before his first TV broadcast. So there's that sort of sense of general seediness and shabbiness in one answer. So Wilson's having all kinds of trouble with Marcia. What about, so there's Tony Benn, who's been kicking up all kinds of, basically is foisting

policies on Wilson that he doesn't really want. That's right. Wilson doesn't really want to go into that election with any policies at all, Tom, because Wilson's great thing. You said about people being bored. Wilson wants people to be bored because his promise is, I will give you a quiet life. No more conflict with the unions. We've got our lovely social contract, which fans of Russo will remember from the last

episode, where we will basically give the unions the pay deals they want. And we will then give them lots of extra goodies like health and safety stuff and all these things. And in return, they will moderate their future pay demands. Tony Benn, on the other hand, is the great apostle of nationalization, of a national enterprise board, of state planning

and all this stuff. And he's the great bogeyman. And Wilson basically tries to keep him in a box throughout the election campaign. And there are all these stories that keep coming into Labour High Command

that the newspapers are preparing these amazing revelations about Tony Benn, that he's a drug addict. Oh, really? Because, I mean, Tony Benn is the most abstemious of men, isn't he? He is. He's a teetotaler.

He loves his tea. He loves his teetot. But nothing more than that. And he also, as we discovered when he appeared in The Restless History's second historical Love Island, he very much loves his wife, Caroline. It's one of the great political love stories. But the newspapers also had apparently prepared this story that he was taking part in orgies at a place called Bickenhall Mansions, which is in Marleybone, an Edwardian mansion block.

Sunday Mirror editor passed the story to Harold Wilson and Wilson called Ben in and he said, sort of smoked his pipe at him and said, is it true? Have you been taking part in orgies in these? And Ben was very offended by this because obviously he hadn't. Well, he would be, of course. And is this the point where the tabloids really start going after Tony Benn? Because from this point on, he will be the great hate object, won't he? He's the kind of the standard bearer of what the tabloids call the loony left.

Yes. So they don't really coin the loony left phrase for another 10 years, but absolutely at this point, they're calling him a commissar, a Bolshevik, all this kind of thing. And actually, Wilson goes out of his way to sort of basically hide Ben under a massive blanket for the next few weeks during the election campaign. So that's all very, very inspiring. And meanwhile, what about Edward Heath? Well, so Ted Heath, fans of Ted Heath will have not enjoyed the previous episode because he was absent. He was off sulking. He's been defeated. I think it's fair to say Ted Heath is the most busted of busted flushes going into the

October 1974 campaign because he never thought he was going to lose, Tom, that first election. And now I know this is a sad moment for you because you're a man of Salisbury. Ted Heath, of course, famously went to live in Salisbury, a great Wiltshire man. I don't know if you like yachting and piano playing and stuff. I don't really like yachting, no. But his yacht crashes, doesn't it? A couple of months before the election. Yeah, he's unbelievably unlucky. He's got an undiagnosed thyroid complaint, Heath. His yacht, Morning Cloud, sank at the Isle of Wight and two people died on it. One of whom was his godson. So that's a very bad business.

Yeah, that is sad. And he has clung on to the Tory leadership like a limpet all through the summer. He does, doesn't he? He goes to visit Chairman Mao who gives him a couple of pandas. Pandas, yeah.

Has that not boosted his profile? No. One of his friends said Mao was the first person he'd seen in months who was actually pleased to see him, which is a harsh thing for one of your friends

to say about you. That is harsh. Now, the thing that Ted Heath and the Tories do in October 1974 see him, which is a harsh thing for one of your friends to say about you. Yeah, that is harsh. Now, the thing that Ted Heath and the Tories do in October 1974, Tom, which you will enjoy because you're very much a kind of, I mean, without being mean to you, you're a centrist dad, aren't you? Ultimately. I guess. And Ted Heath runs the ultimate, the absolutely ultimate centrist dad, Rory Stewart, rest

his politics campaign. Well, I can't wait to see if it sweeps him to power. Yes. And you can gauge from that how effective it's going to be. What's the manifestation of this centrist dad manifesto? First of all, his aides say to him, you were too abrasive in February 1974. Take off your suit. Remember that Rory Stewart took off his tie.

He did, yeah. So the sartorial element is important here. Take off your suit and go around the country in your shirt sleeves or indeed in a cuddly jumper. And being a vuncular, friendly, jovial fellow. Now, Ted Heath is not a jovial man. But also they say, listen, we're not going to win as just ourselves. We have to say that we stand for,

and this is where your politics comes in, a national unity coalition government, a sensible government. Let's get people together around the table. Put aside the partisan bickering. Okay. So he's got all his ministers. Can I ask you about one particular minister and how- Who's it going to be? How she- Oh, right. Can I ask you about one particular minister and how she reacts to this? And this is the Education Secretary, Mrs. Thatcher.

Yes. So she had not been a great star of Heath's government, I wouldn't have said. They're quite similar, aren't they? So they're both from kind of petty bourgeois backgrounds, one might say. Yeah, but slightly different. Hers is a little bit more respectable. Her father was an alderman and ran a shop. Ted Heath's father was basically a builder.

And I think as a result, she is much keener to trumpet her background than Ted Heath is. So Ted Heath's been embarrassed about his background and rebrands himself as a patrician. Mrs. Thatcher is a sort of sharp-elbowed, aspirational, lower-middle-class warrior in a way that Heath isn't really. But at this point, I mean, is she enthusiastically supporting Heath's manifesto and election plan? Is she piling in or is she off having nothing to do with it? No, she loves it. Well, appears to love it.

So Heath is slightly running with the tide with all this coalition business. All his sort of wet Tory moderates, the kind of patrician people that he surrounds himself with, the Willie Whitehaws and Sir Ian Gilmores and Peter Walkers and people like this, names that will be familiar to some of our older listeners or people who know about British politics in the next 20 years or so. They love all this stuff. Getting together and the national interest, putting aside tribalism, consensus. And indeed, the papers love it.

The papers are all very be kind about this, Tom. The Guardian, the Times, they all say, let's have a coalition, maybe liberal Tory, maybe liberal Labour, maybe Tory Labour, national government in the national interest. I suppose so, Dominic. I mean, you know, you're being very sneery about this, but I suppose it's

sensible politics on one level, because after the previous election, had Thorpe and Heath been able to get together, then there would have been a coalition. So is there a sense in which the Tories are kind of laying out their stall for future coalition partners? Yes, arguably. They think that the liberals will do well again. But sorry, I never answered you about Mrs. Thatcher. Mrs. Thatcher never says a word of complaints about all this. Now, of course, later on, she's the sworn foe of compromise and consensus. But actually, I said previously she hadn't been a massive star because she hadn't really featured that much in their first election campaign. So does she feature a

lot in this one? In this one, she appears more often than any other Tory frontbencher. So she's the breakout star. She's the breakout star. So it's sometimes said that when she became Tory leader a few months later, no one had ever heard of her and she was the darkest of dark horses. That's not true at all. She features in their party political broadcasts more than even Heath himself does, because they think Heath is very abrasive.

Mrs. Thatcher is maybe more emollient, famous, but yes, Mrs. Thatcher would appeal to that crucial dynamic of housewives, which Heath will not appeal to. And actually, Mrs. Thatcher has a treat for everybody. She has an extraordinary bribe. If you're a homeowner in Salisbury, let's say, in Wiltshire, no matter how high inflation and interest rates go, obviously this is a period of very high inflation, Mrs. Thatcher will cap your mortgage rate at 9.5%. There is no way it will go higher than that. So she's bucking the market. She is bucking the market. It's pure statism gone mad. Corporatism. It is pure statism gone mad.

Corporatism. It is corporatism. And actually, people who would subsequently become her great admirers on the right are really appalled by this. They say, this is just the most terrible status bribe for mid-class homeowners. But she's a great salesman for it. She goes on TV. She's promising, you know, we'll protect you at the value of middle-class families, struggling to pay the mortgage and all this kind of stuff.

Hardworking, decent families. And this is basically the only policy that the Tories have in October 1974. The rest is all just waffle about coalitions. He goes to his first big public meeting in Cardiff. This is the new cuddly, jovial Ted Heath. And he speaks very quietly and no one can hear what he's saying because he's obviously been told to tone it down. And the first question comes in,

somebody says, what will be your first move against inflation, Mr. Heath? And he says, to see precisely what the situation is. Yeah. And they say, well, then what will you do? And he says,

I'll take the appropriate action. Well, that's brilliant. Come on. That's masterly. You've got to give us more than that. So the mood is very grim. People on the right are just in absolute misery and despair. Philip Larkin, Tom, are you a fan of Philip Larkin, the poet?

Yeah. I mean, he's basically the most right-wing person in Western Europe at this point. Yeah. And he writes to Kingsley Amos and he says, we're never going to have another conservative government. There's just going to be a series of Labour governments and then the Russians are going to step in. Amos writes back to him and he says, listen, this is going to be the last free election. We'll never be allowed to vote again. But a lot of people who are affluent, upper middle class,

people who've done very well, are in absolute despair about all this. There's a real sense of panic, of moral and political panic among the propertied classes because they've got their bribe offer from Mrs Thatcher, but they basically know that the Tories aren't going to get in. So the polls are definitely against the Tories? Oh, very much so. Very much so. So Labour have a lead of about 8% to 10% going into the campaign because Ted Heath is disregarded as, he's like a football manager who just can't win a game, Tom. Now, you may be wondering, what's happened to our old friends, the Liberals?

I am wondering about that. So the Liberals, the party in the centre, led by Jeremy Thorpe, who will go on to be responsible for the death of a dog on Exmoor and be accused of murder and get off. But anyway, that's all by the by. We've done an episode on that.

So what is Jeremy Thorpe up to? And does it involve hovercrafts? It's important to say that whatever the tour is, other failings. They're the only party in this election who have not in some way

been involved in a murder plot. That's true. Yeah, there is that. Say what you like about Teddy, but he never plotted it as a murder. Either a dog, his ex-lover, or one of his own aides

secretary right so jeremy thorpe now you would think because he was the breakout star of the first 1974 election is this his moment and he thinks that himself but he has made a terrible mistake tom he decides to go to tour the land i can't even believe i'm going to say it because it sounds so ridiculous he's going to tour the land by hover can't even believe I'm going to say it because it sounds so ridiculous. He's going to tour the land by hovercraft in this election. Is this because all the Liberal target seats are on the coast?

There's a lot on the coast, on the south, yeah, on the south coast. I mean, there are quite a lot in the West Country. I mean, how do you get to the heart of the West Country on a hovercraft? Will you go round the edge, maybe? Tormund and Devon? I mean, that's the thinking.

But obviously, I mean, Britain, I don't know whether Britain is peculiarly invested in hovercrafts in the 70s. Certainly, I remember being at school- Very proud of them. In the sort of late years of the 70s, all the talk was of hovercrafts. Yeah. It's like Concorde. In my mind, yeah.

Concorde, North Sea oil, the hovercraft. This is the future of the British economy. Yeah. This is what Britain will look like. So Jeremy Thorpe is associating himself with a bright technological future, perhaps a hint of science fiction. Yes. It's all glorious and exciting and maybe people will go around with those hover things on their backs as well. Exactly. Holidays in Jupiter. Exactly. So how does that pan out? It goes very badly. So Tom, the climax of his hovercraft campaign takes place at Sidmouth.

And a reporter who's traveling with Thorpe's campaign thinking, you know, could I be writing about the next prime minister? He writes as follows. The first wave struck just as the craft was turning off the beach to head away to the Isle of Wight. I was pulling on one rope just behind the liberal leader when he was nearly swept into the sea by some breakers. So there are photographers there who are capturing this scene as Thorpe and another liberal guy called John Pardo are staggering through the sea with their possessions. So absolutely the image of a dynamic, go-getting future prime minister. The hovercraft actually ends up being completely destroyed by the waves.

They'd end up abandoning it, Tom, on the beach, on the shingle. And of course, everyone then takes photos of this and says, Jeremy Thorpe's Britain. So it's seen as, I mean, it's seen as a metaphor for Britain and for the liberals, is it? It is. Absolutely, it is. Other than this, it's an incredibly uneventful campaign. It rains all the time. I mean, it's October, so it's very gloomy.

This is the, what is this? The fourth time that Wilson and Heath have faced each other. So it's a bit like one of those FA Cup or World Cup finals or something, where you've seen the same teams a thousand times. It's always nil-nil. Germany against Argentina. It's just so depressing. This is how people feel.

Wilson has a pretty comfortable lead. He's just wittering on about coalitions and national unity, and he hasn't got any policies. Thorpe's falling into the sea. Yeah, fell into the sea in his hovercraft. The only thing that can possibly stand in Wilson's way, Tom, is Britain's favourite newspaper at the time. Not necessarily the best-selling,

but probably the one that Middle England enjoyed most, which is, of course, Her Majesty's Daily Mail. Because the news reaches Wilson headquarters, the Daily Mail had prepared this enormous story on Wilson's finances. And actually, Wilson's finances are a little bit mysterious. He'd got all these royalties from a massive and incredibly boring book that he'd written about his 1960s government. And he'd given a lot of these royalties, it seems, to Marcia to spend on school fees for her children. And the rest was in a Swiss bank account. Right. So spending on school fees and Swiss bank accounts. I mean, what would Tony Benn make of that? Tony Benn would not be impressed at all. And the Daily Mail have got this huge story about this,

which they're planning to run. And the Wilson team are in absolute kind of tenterhooks about it. And then there's all kinds of... They're waiting for the mail to run at one night. And there's all rumours coming in. There's been a bomb scare. A mail had quarters to the place had been evacuated. There are all kind of high level meetings taking place about where they're going to run this story that could completely change the course of the election. And actually Wilson's lawyer, Lord Goodman, I think it is,

wins the day and persuades them not to run it or intimidates them into not running the story. So the next day comes and goes and they don't run the story about Wilson's finances. So as polling day approaches, 10th of October, there's an inevitability actually about Wilson's finances. So as polling day approaches, 10th of October,

there's an inevitability actually about Wilson's victory. All the newspapers, by the way, very few of the newspapers want him to win. The Guardian, the Guardian wants to win. The Liberals. Guardian loves the hovercraft business. The Times wants a Tory-Liberal coalition. The Mail wants a Tory-Liberal coalition.

So the polling day comes, Thursday, the 10th of october pouring with rain wilson's aides just obviously spend all the time bickering among themselves marcia has got a load of sedatives which she's washing down with brandy so she's joined in the drinking oh absolutely yeah and they sit up and at first it's brilliant the bbc say they're going to get 150 seat majority wilson and co. But then as the night goes on, that majority gets whittled down and down and down. And he does end up with the majority, Tom, but of just three seats. So that's what, only seven or eight more than he'd had in the previous election? Then he started with, yeah. So actually, Labour's vote has fallen since February. The Tory vote had fallen even more.

It's actually their worst performance since 1945 in number of votes. And vote share, the Tory performance was terrible, 36%, which is, I think, their worst ever at that point. But what wouldn't Rishi Sunak give for those figures now? Right. That's a fair point. So Heath is done. We'll come on to Heath after the break. Just before we go into the break, you'll be pleased to hear that Wilson celebrates in a ludicrously disorganized and chaotic way. I'd be disappointed if he didn't. So they spend the evening arguing about

who's going to go to the victory party. There's an argument about one of his most faithful aides, who's got Albert Murray, who basically carries his bag for him. Marcia says he's not allowed in. So the others have just taken a dislike to him. So the others boycott his victory party because Albert's not allowed in. There's a great deal of rage.

They go off to a different hotel, I think, to watch the telly. Then the next day, there's a big argument about who's going to be allowed on the flight home to London. They finally get to London to go to Transport House, Labour Party headquarters for their victory celebration. There is a bomb scare. So again, that issue of the IRA hangs over the whole thing. So there's a bomb scare, the whole place has to be evacuated. And then the really, really big news. That day, they've got back to London, they now have the tiny majority and they can look into turning the nation's fortunes around. And Bernard Donoghue, the policy chief of Harold Wilson, is at number 10, and he's actually going to go off for the weekend and kind of clear his mind and think about what they need to do to sort things out.

And just before he does, one of Wilson's civil servants comes in and says to him, I've got some news. There's been a big breakthrough in the lunch negotiations. And the big breakthrough is everybody is now banned from having lunch in number 10 to sort it all out. And Donoghue writes in his diary that evening, I hope Harold gets a minute to think about the country's economy in between acting as a messenger for Marcia's hostilities. The nation is going bust. He's at a moment of political triumph, and he spends his time as a messenger on these pathetically trivial matters of who eats lunch in number 10. Brilliant. After the break, we will look at the immediate aftermath of the election. Who's up? Who's down?

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. Who's up? Who's down? and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History for the final segment of our four-part epic on the single year of 1974 in Britain. And Dominic, we began this episode with a bombing by the ira of a pub and we're going to begin this half with the bombing of another pub by the ira and this was in birmingham yes it's very vivid in my imagination because it's um it features in jonathan co's brilliant novel about growing up in birmingham in 70s, The Rotter's Club. Yes, it does.

The hero's sister's boyfriend dies in it. That's right. Yes, it's a brilliant book and a very affecting moment. So this is six weeks after the Guildford bombing. So it's about five weeks after the general election. And it's a Thursday in Birmingham. It's payday in Birmingham. So the pubs are crowded. There's a basement pub called the Tavern in the Town, not far from New Street Station.

So if those people are familiar with the center of Birmingham. And just after about 8.15, the people in that pub, they hear a kind of muffled thump. And they don't know it, but a bomb has just gone off at the bottom of the Rotunda in Birmingham, the pub at the bottom of Rotunda, which is just a few minutes walk away. And exactly 10 minutes after that, so there's crowds gathering outside this pub now as people are moving down the street. A bomb goes off in the tavern in the town as well. So it's the second bombing of the night. And if you read the descriptions in the newspapers. The descriptions are horrific. So a fireman recalls seeing a torso with no arms or legs and a spongy mess where its head had been.

The torso was not only wriggling, it was also through the spongy mess screaming. I mean, it's so horrible. Yeah, so the fireman asked the TV crews to film some of these scenes and the TV crews refused because they said they were too horrific. 21 people were killed, almost 200 injured, some of them very badly. There was actually a third bomb in a wine bar. So basically what had happened is the IRA had put a bomb in the first pub at the bottom of the rotunda. Then they had planned it so that as people fled, a second bomb in a pub

just down the street would catch them. They claimed they had telephoned warnings, but they did so with so little time before the pub bombs went off. There was no way that the police could act or the pubs could be evacuated. And because it comes so soon after the Guildford bombing, I think there's a real sense of shock, of trauma, particularly in the city of Birmingham, in the aftermath of all this. There was talk at the time, briefly, that this would spark, you know, sort of sectarian or sort of backlash politics in britain itself so what anti-irish

pogroms anti-irish exactly so there's there were a few isolated incidents so there's petrol bombs that are thrown as an irish pub in west london there are talks about people attacking irish community centers and things but actually by and large it doesn't really come to very much the government in the aftermath passed a prevention of Terrorism Act. So that allowed people to be held for questioning for seven days, for example. But actually, looking at it now, I think the striking thing is actually how muted... Except that, as with Guildford, the police are looking to finger people they can blame. And there's again, there's another terrible miscarriage of justice, isn't there? Yeah, the Birmingham Six. So that's six men. They're Irishmen who'd lived in Birmingham since the 60s. They're arrested. Confessions are beaten out of them. They were in prison until 1991,

until the conviction was overturned. So this is a grim background to the start of Wilson's, what is it now? I'm losing track. His fourth term, his third term? It depends how you measure it, Tom, but it's a sort of continuation. He's won four elections. He's won four elections out of five. So whatever you say about Harold Wilson, he's a very cunning operator. He's very good at elections. Even 1970, which he lost, he actually did well to come as, I would argue, given his record in government, I think he actually did well to come within a, you know, to have a chance of winning it.

So Wilson appeals to people who want a quiet life. I think the key to Wilson is that people in Britain, I think in the 60s and 70s, they were tired. They were very anxious about change. They were conscious of no longer being top nation. And I think in some part of their minds, a lot of people didn't know that they were facing a very difficult transformation as the industries on which they'd relied, coal, shipbuilding, steel, all those kinds of things that they were clearly struggling, but they didn't really want to face it. Actually, the person we've mentioned a lot who writes this diary, Bernard Donoghue, Wilson's policy chief, is brilliant on all this in his diaries and in his memoirs, saying, we knew that change would have to come,

but actually we were benefiting electorally from people who wanted to put that off. And Wilson's political persona, I think, is one of very, very small-c conservatism by this point. It's basically, let's not frighten the horses, no conflicts with the unions, nothing that will lead to any kind of public controversy, just steady as she goes. And actually, the orderly management of decline to some extent, Tom. So I suppose there are two radical solutions to this crisis, both of which involve a pretty dramatic restructuring of the economy. The first would be the one proposed by Tony Benn, that you become almost a siege economy. The Uthamial nose at the power of international capital. And the other is the radical turn that the British economy does end up taking, most famously with Mrs. Thatcher, but also, of course, as you brilliantly point out in your book, before that with Dennis Healey. And is there a sense in the wake of the election that these are really the two alternatives, that just going with the status quo is going to be

inadequate? No, not initially, actually, Tom. So on the Tony Benn thing, whatever else you say about Tony Benn, he had a very coherent and thought through approach to dealing with the problem that Britain was facing, which was, as you say, a siege economy, protectionism, rebuild British industry behind a kind of tariff wall. Because the contrast with Wilson, in a way, it seems that all this stuff about dinners and whatever with Marcia, it's a displacement exercise. He doesn't want to have to engage with it. Agreed. Whereas Ben really is engaging with it.

Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree, Tom. I mean, in fact, the people who are working on policy, the backroom boys, as it were, they are all boys except for Marcia, in number 10, say again and again in this period, 1974, 1975, 1976, he doesn't read the papers. He doesn't engage. Inflation is heading towards 30%, but he doesn't really want to do anything about it. And they're really frustrated by it, actually. And so what happens in the months immediately after the election? Is there any sense of an election bounce? No, not really. It's actually a sort of... Whatever they're... Letting the air out of the balloon? Yeah, the air out of a balloon. No,

not at all. So actually, by the end of October, Dennis Healy, who had thrown a lot of money around to try and win the election, meets his colleagues and actually says to them, do you know what, actually, all our projections were too optimistic. Surprise, surprise. We're going to be borrowing probably twice as much money as we thought we would. And that's going to rise three times as much in a year or so. Inflation is totally out of control now. It's well into 20%. The threshold payments, which we mentioned in the very first episode of this series, they've now been triggered, Tom, giving you an automatic pay rise because of inflation. They've been triggered 11 times. So adding to the kind of inflationary spiral. And in November, all the Wilson government get together, well, the Wilson cabinet, they get together at Chequers. So this is the official residence, country residence of the prime minister comes from very much a friend of the rest of history, Tom. James Callaghan, your great hero, later prime minister.

They say, what do you think, Jim? And Jim says, well, when I'm shaving in the morning, I say to myself that if I were a young man, I'd emigrate. And obviously, everybody laughs. But he's only half joking because he says to them in that meeting, if we carry on as we are, we will be stripped of our seat on the UN Security Council. Then he goes on to say, nothing in these papers makes me believe anything to the contrary, but I haven't got any solution, which obviously is slightly sub-ideal. Actually, the thing about emigrating, loads of people are emigrating.

So David Bowie's off, isn't he, to New York? The Stones are still in the south of France, I think. Roger Moore, Tom? James Bond's left. Where does he go? So Roger Moore, I think, went in about 73. But actually, the Bond films themselves go, because Moonraker ends up being filmed in France at the end of the 70s for tax reasons. God, the humiliation. But also, lots of young people go. So many, in fact, that for the first time in 1974, New Zealand bring in controls to stop so many British people moving to New Zealand,

and Australia follows suit in 1975. So this is unprecedented, that they are closing their doors. I'll tell you some English tourists who are in Australia in the latter half after the election. It's the England cricket team. I knew this was coming. Playing against Rodney Marsh, the Australian wicketkeeper, not the Manchester City striker. A poorly behaved Manchester City striker from the last episode. And they get absolutely torn to pieces by Dennis Lilley and Geoff Thompson,

the most ferocious fast bowlers. And at one point, the abdominal protector, which David Lloyd, England batsman, he almost becomes a eunuch. Oh no. Cracked in two. And there, I'm afraid, is a metaphor, isn't it? There is a metaphor, yeah. So 1975, would you believe, so the year after the election, was the first year since records began that Britain's population fell because so many people were emigrating.

So there is a solution to the immigration crisis. Or punch our economy into the abyss. Yeah, the Conservatives could totally crash the economy. Well, let us end with the Conservatives. So just on Wilson, just before Christmas, one of Wilson's aides gave him a paper saying, we are facing an economic Armageddon. As it turned out, the real reckoning was delayed until just after he left office in 1976. So he leaves office in the spring of 1976, absolutely knackered, worn out, massive bags under his eyes, very hanged dog. And almost immediately afterwards, there is a huge run on the pound and Britain has to seek a humiliating world record bailout from the International Monetary Fund, which later

becomes, of course, an item on the Thatterite charge sheet against the 1970s. That and the winter discontent, which follows later in the decade when there's kind of non-stop which later becomes, of course, an item on the Thatterite charge sheet against the 1970s. That and the winter discontent. Which follows later in the decade. When there's kind of non-stop strikes and gravediggers go on strike and things. So just before we do come to what happens to Edward Heath, just the state of the economy, because people say now that the country is in a worse mess than it's ever been in. It's not as bad, at least it doesn't seem as bad as it was back then. Is it actually the case the economy isn't quite as bad as we've been making it out to sound? I don't think it's as

bad as now as it was in the 70s by any means. No. I think the economy is obviously far from perfect now, but we don't have inflation at 27%. Economies fluctuate, Tom. So good times, bad times, stock markets rise and fall. To some degree, standing back, you might say a little bit of this is surface froth, right? But what's gone on with Britain between the 1950s and the 1980s is much more than surface froth. It's a massive structural change. So it's a process of kind of de-industrialization, isn't it? Yes, it absolutely is de-industrialization. So first into industry.

And first out. And what's happening, I think, in the 70s is that the Wilson government and Callaghan government, like the Heath government before it, are trying to insulate, for completely humane and understandable reasons, trying to insulate a lot of working people from the consequences of that transformation. So when you read the papers and things, they will discuss a car factory in Scotland or something, and they will say, well, we just have to put money into it. We have to keep it going because if we let it fold, thousands of people will lose their jobs. The effect on the local community will be terrible. We don't want to be a government that allows that to happen. We'll find the money. And the danger with doing that, of course, is you just put off the evil day and you make it worse and worse. And I think there was a definite sense

by the end of the 70s, and this is very palpable in the memoirs and the diaries of people in the Labour government, not the Tories, but the Labour government. There was a sense, we actually can't keep doing this forever. Something is going to have to change at some point. So in that sense, I think the economy, the picture was worse in the 70s because people knew that what would follow would be so brutal. Brutal. Exactly. Which I don't think we have now. Well, unless they are siding with the Benite diagnosis and the Benite prescription. But even the Benite prescription, you see, the Benite prescription is a really interesting one because when it was modelled, when people said, well, what would actually happen if we said sodu to the IMF and the World Bank and whatnot, and we sealed ourselves off from the world economy to

some extent? Actually, what would happen would be probably very, very high inflation. And even though lots of people would still be in work, there would probably be a massive drop in a lot of people's living standards because imports would be so expensive because everybody else would put up trade barriers against Britain. So the Benite solution was by no means a panacea. I mean, obviously, I don't think it was a panacea because I don't think it would have worked. But I mean, the idea that you could just go on as you were, just finding bailouts all the time, I don't think anybody thought that in the long run that would possibly be a solution. Okay. Well, let's just finish this by

looking at what happens with the Tories. Because of course, the political figure who emerges from this, she's been a bit part player really so far, but she will become the dominant figure in the 80s, is Mrs. Thatcher, who ends up replacing Edward Heath as leader. Yeah. Although she shouldn't have done, Tom. That's the extraordinary thing. So first of all, Heath has now lost. He's lost three out of four elections.

And he's lost two in a row in a single year. So he really, I mean, he has to go. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to think that he would want to go. But he refuses to go. Very Ted Heath behaviour. He's sulky. He's sort of sullen. He doesn't want to talk to go. Very Ted Heath behaviour. He's sulky. He's sort of sullen. He doesn't want to talk to anybody,

but it strikes him as outrageous that people would suggest that he... I mean, he basically doesn't even want to admit that he's lost. Now, the most likely challenger is a man called Sir Keith Joseph, who had been Heath's Secretary of State for Health and Social Security. He was an heir to a construction firm fortune. Doesn't he come out in favor of eugenics or something? Well, we're going to come to this. He's a kind of Tory Robespierre, Tom. So he's pale, he's very priggish, he's incredibly serious, he's incredibly conscientious. He's one of the rare Tories, I think it's fair to say, who probably spends about 20 hours a day thinking about the plight of the poor, and he will physically writhe with agony. Isn't he a mad monk? People call him the mad monk.

They call him the mad monk. And he undergoes this extraordinary conversion experience in the course of 1974. So all this is going on, from the kind of corporatist Toryism of the Heath era to free market radicalism. He says, I believed all this time I was a conservative. I see now I wasn't. But just to be clear, I mean, we today associate conservatism with free market economics. Yes. Principally because of Mrs. Thatcher and I guess Reagan as well. Yeah. But actually, letting the free market rip through institutions and people's livelihood and destroy industries and ways of living that have lasted for decades and often centuries, I mean, that's not conservative, really, is it? Ted Heath there on the podcast, lovely to welcome him.

No, but all the choices facing people in this period whether on the far left the right whatever are all pretty bad awful they are so theo has written in the chat hence the term neo-conservative but actually theo the real term is neoliberal so a lot of real tom holland style well the people that tom was ventriloquizing, so sort of patrician consensual Tories who fought in tank battles in 1944. Thick glasses. Now with thick glasses. Yeah, great hair. They would say, this isn't really conservatism if it's free markets.

This is liberalism. This is Victorian liberalism, and we don't want any part of it in our party. And they would later say this of Mrs. Thatcher. Now, Keith Joseph doesn't think this. He's been converted to this kind of neoliberalism. And he says, we've done it all wrong. Everything that Ted Heath stood for is nonsense. All his friends are saying, come on, challenge Heath. Put us on a free market line. The tough medicine that is needed. And do you know what? He's going to do it. And Mrs. Thatcher will be his campaign manager. And then, like Enoch Powell before him, Joseph makes the terrible

mistake of going to Birmingham to give a speech. And he goes to the Grand Hotel in Birmingham, and he gives this disastrous speech where he says, and I quote, the balance of our population, our human stock is threatened. And he says it's threatened because a high and rising proportion of children are being born to mothers least fitted to bring children into the world. And he says, we should make a massive effort to get working class women to use more birth control to stop them having children. He says, because if we don't, it'll mean the degeneration of Britain.

The degeneration of the racial stock. Yeah. Is he kind of verging on saying that? Well, he doesn't use the words racial stock. I think it's fair to say, Tom. And I think he would be appalled. I mean, he's Jewish himself. Yes, by the way.

Harold Macmillan rather cruelly said he was the only boring jew i've ever known yes so i think a lot of people are absolutely appalled by this they think it's the most terrible gaffe private eye which we mentioned a few times the satirical magazine because of his enthusiasm for birth control took to calling him sashith instead of sakith and i think people just thought he's gone mad you know and he basically thinks oh I've made a terrible mistake and he effectively bows out he goes around the house of commons in November so it's only six weeks or so after the election saying to people oh I can't I'm not going to do

it because also he's not really cut out to be a leader anyway he's a kind of prince hamlet figure isn't he he is an absolute he's dithery. He delays. Yes. He's intellectual. People would often say of him, he's the only person they would meet who in meetings would genuinely strike his own head very hard when he was changing his mind. He'd like pummel his head and stuff, which they found disconcerting. So anyway, on the 21st of November, he goes into the office of his campaign manager and

he says, Margaret, I'm not going to do it. And it's at that point, there's no doubt that it hadn't occurred to her before then, because she wanted to be Chancellor, not Prime Minister. It's at that point that she said to him, well, Keith, if you're not going to stand, I will. And then she goes home and she says to Dennis, her husband, I'm actually going to stand myself for the Tory leadership against Ted Heath. And Dennis said, you must be out of your mind. You haven't got a hope. You haven't got a hope. And so four days later, she ignores Dennis, obviously. Four days later, she goes to see Ted Heath in his office and she says to him, Ted, I'm going to

stand against you for the leadership or whatever. And Ted Heath, all he says is, you'll lose. And Tom, the rest is history. Brilliant. So, so much more to come. The 70s, the Labour government. Yeah. We should get into that next year, because next year will be the anniversary, Tom, of her becoming Tory leader. Very exciting. So the perfect opportunity to do a series on the late 70s. So James Callaghan. I mean, the public, I think, I mean, they're desperate to hear a series of podcasts about James Callaghan. People have been repeatedly demanding, I think, I mean, they're desperate to hear a series of podcasts about James Callaghan.

People have been repeatedly demanding it. And so it will come. So Dominic, thanks so much. We hope that you have all enjoyed that. I mean, I have to say, it kind of cheers me up. I feel depressed about the state of the country. That's good. And I kind of think, well, it's not as bad as it could have been.

Tom, it's nice to end a podcast with you feeling more cheerful. Yeah. So on that cheery note, thank you very much for listening. And bye-bye. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.