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Saturday, the fifth of 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 onto the pub, The Horse and Groom in Guilford, 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 alcob 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. Dominic, that is from your history of Britain in 1974 to 1979, Seasons in the Sun. It describes what has been commemorated as the Guilford Pub bombing.

Paul is dead?

Yes.

Paul was killed straight away. He's one of five people killed that evening, fifth 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 teenage girls who'd also joined the Women's Royal Army Corps, and two teenage boys, Scottsguards, William Fawcith and James Hunter, who were friends in the same street in Renfruisha, who had only joined up a month beforehand. The Guilford 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. Of course, what made it more shocking, Tom, was that afterwards, the police charged four innocent people who went to prison for 15 years.

Because that's what it's chiefly remembered for now, isn't it? Yes.

Almost certainly, the culpits were a group called the Balcom Street Gang, who were a provisional IRA unit, who were 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 so on didn't listen. So, yeah, it's a pretty shocking story. 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. This darkness overshadows the election.

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.

Yes.

People on the left are talking with some justification the possibility of a right-wing coup. Yes. There is a sense of extreme polarization in the country. 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 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. We're into year five a bit now. 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-The Times actually says that, doesn't it?

It says that no since the war, who 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 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 realized that Britain is actually on the receiving end of change and of major geopolitical developments. There's a sense of impotence, I think. Impotence of the government's doing anything about Northern Ireland, but impotence to deal with inflation or the pace of globalization and deindustrialization and all of these kinds of things.

Is there a sense also of, I might almost say boredom, tedium, a sense that this is just an endless cycle of two rather shopsoiled leaders in the form of Wilson and Heath. Neither of them are inspirational. Neither of them really seem to promise a radical change.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. Wilson, who we talked about a lot last time, the chaotics... I mean, some people might think we were being a bit harsh on Wilson, that chaotic six-month period after he became Prime Minister. But actually, the chaos really continues into the election campaign. So the very first meeting for 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 Donner, who is his Policy Chief.

To be fair, they have been plotting to murder her. They have, right.

But they've been discussing plotting to murder her. They That's what I've 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. That behavior. Also, Wilson gets tanked up on Brandy before his first TV broadcast. So this It's that sense of general seediness and shabbiness in one-hand.

Wilson's having all kinds of trouble with Marcia. What about... There's Tony Ben, who's been kicking up all kinds of... Basically, he's 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 Ruso 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 Ben, 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 Labor High Command, that the newspapers are preparing He's preparing these amazing revelations about Tony Ben, that he's a drug addict. Oh, really?

Because Tony Ben is the most abstemious of men, isn't he?

He's a Teto Claire.

He loves his tea.

He loves his Teto. He loves his Teto. But nothing more than that. He also, as we discovered when he appeared in the Rest of His History's second historical Love Island. He very much loves his wife, Caroline. It's one of the great love stories. But the newspapers also had apparently prepared this story that he was taking part in Orges at a place called Bicken Hall mansions, which is in Marleybone, an Edwardian mansion block. A Sunday Mirror editor He asked this story to Harold Wilson, and Wilson called Ben in and he said, 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 Ben? Because from this point on, he will be the great hate object, won't he? He's the standard bearer of what the tablo is called, 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 Bolshevak, all this thing. Actually, Wilson goes out of his way to basically hide Ben under a massive blanket for the next few weeks during the election campaign.

That's all very inspiring. Meanwhile, what about Edward Heath?

Well, so Ted Heath, fans of Ted Heath will not have 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 isn't 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. 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 Wilcherman. 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 Wighton, and two people died on it. One of them was his god's son. That's a very bad business. That is sad. He has clung on to the Tauri 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. 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.

That is harsh.

Now, the thing that Ted Heath and the Tauris do in October 1974, Tom, which you will enjoy because You're very much a... I mean, without being mean to you, you're a centrist dad, aren't you? Ultimately.

I guess.

Ted Heath runs the ultimate, the absolutely ultimate centrist dad, Rory Stuart, Rest is politics.Campaign..

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

Yes. You can gage 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 in February 1974. Take off your suit. Remember that Roy Stuart took off his tie, Tom? He did, yeah. 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. Being a vunkular, 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 rest of 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.

How she reacts to this. This is the Education Secretary, Mrs. Thatcher. Yes.

She had not been a great star of Keith's government, I wouldn't have said.

They're quite similar, aren't they? They're both from petty bourgeois backgrounds, one might say.

Yeah, but slightly different. Yours is a little bit more respectable. Her father was an alderman and ran a shop. Ted Keith's father was basically a builder. I think as a result, she is much keener to trumpet her background than Ted Heath is. Ted Heath has been embarrassed about his background and rebrands himself as a patrician. Mrs. Thatcher is a sharp, elbowed, aspirational, lower middle class warrior in a way that Heath isn't really.

But at this point, I 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, it appears to love it. So, Keith is slightly running with the tide with all this coalition business. All his wet, Tori moderates, the patrician people that he surrounds himself with, the Willy Whitehaws and Serena Gilmore and Peter Walker 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 in their 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, Tauri, maybe liberal labor, maybe Tauri labor, national government in the national interest.

I suppose so, Dominic. 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 he's been able to get together, then they would have been a coalition. Is there a sense in which the Tories are 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.

Does she feature a lot in this one?

In this one, she appears more often than any other Tori frontbencher.

She's the breakout star.

She's the breakout star. It's sometimes said that when she became Tori 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 broadcast more than even Heath himself does, because they think, Heath is very abrasive. It's just that she's maybe more brilliant, famous, Yes. Mrs. Thatcher would appeal to that crucial dynamic of housewives, which Heath will not appeal to. 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 nine and a half %. 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 corporatism. 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 the class home owners. But she's a great salesman for it. She goes on TV, she's promising, We'll protect you the value of middle class families, struggling to pay the mortgage, and all this stuff.

Hard working, decent families.

This is basically the only policy that the Tories have in October 1974. The rest is all just waffle about coalitions. Yeah. So he goes to his first big public meeting in Cardiff. This is the new cuddly jovial Teddy. 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. And they say, Well, then what will you do? And he says, take the appropriate action. That's brilliant.

That's masterly.

You got to give us more than that. The mood is very grim. People on the right are just in absolute misery and despair. Philip Larkin, Tom, you're a fan of Philip Larkin, the poet? Yeah. I mean, he's basically the most right wing person in Western Europe at this point. He writes to King's Lineamis and he says, We're never going to have another conservative government. They're just going to be a series of labor governments, and then the Russians are going to step in. Amus writes back to him and he says, Listen, 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 can basically... 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. So Labor have a lead of about 8 to cent going into the campaign. Because Ted Heath is just regarded 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 center, led by Jeremy Thorpe, who will go on to be responsible for a death of a dog on X more 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 Hovercraft?

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 plot it. It's a murder. Either a dog, his ex-lover, or one of his own aides, his 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 He's going 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 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.

There are quite a lot in the West country. How do you get to the heart of the West country on a Hovercraft?

Will you go around the edge, maybe? To Amal and Devon? Up the River Avon. But obviously, I don't know whether Britain is peculiarly invested in Hovercrafts in the '70s. Certainly, I I remember being at school- Very proud of them. In the late years of the '70s, all the talk was of Hovercrafts. Yeah. It's like Concord. In my mind, yeah. Concord, North Sea oil, the Hoverkraft.

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. 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 It goes very badly. Tom, the climax of this Hovercraft campaign takes place as Sidmouth. And a reporter who's traveling with Thorpe's campaign thinking, 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 White. 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.

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 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 gets Argentina.

It's just so depressing. This is how people feel. Wilson has a pretty comfortable lead. He's just wittering on 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 favorite 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. Actually, Wilson's finances are a little bit mysterious curious. He got all these royalties from a massive and incredibly boring book that he'd written about his 1960s government. He'd given a lot of these royalties, it seems, to Marcia to spend on school fees for her children. The rest was in a Swiss bank account.

Spending on school fees and Swiss bank accounts, what would Tony Ben make of that?

Tony Ben would not be impressed at all. The Daily Mail have got this huge story about this, which they're planning to run, and the Wilson team are in absolute tenterhooks about it. Then there's all kinds of... They're waiting for the mail to run at one night, and there's all rumors coming in. There's been a bomb scare, a mail headquarters, so the place has been evacuated. There are all high-level meetings taking place about where they're going to run this story that could completely change the course of the election. 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. The next day comes and goes, and they don't run the story. Story about Wilson's finances. 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 Hoverkraft business. The Times wants a Tori liberal coalition. The Mail wants a Tori liberal coalition. So the Polling Day comes, Thursday, the 10th of October, pouring with rain.

Wilson's aides just 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. 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 Tori vote had fallen even more. It's actually their worst performance since 1945 in number of votes. In number of votes and votes share, the Tori performance was terrible, 36%, which is, I think, their worst ever at that point.

But what wouldn't Richie Sunat give for those figures now?

Right, that's a fair point. So, Keith is done. We'll come on to Keith after the break. Just before we go into the break, you'll be pleased to hear that Wilson celebrates in a ludicrously disorganized and in a 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 I've just taken a dislike to him. The others boycott them. Boycott his victory party because Albert's not allowed him. 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, Labor Party headquarters for their victory celebration. There is a bomb scare. Again, that issue of the IRA, hangs over the whole thing. There's a bomb scare. The whole place has to be evacuated. Then the really, really big news. That day, as they've got back to London, they now have the tiny majority, and they can look into turning the nation's fortunes around. Bernard Donogh, the Policy Chief, the Earl of Harold Wilson, is at number 10, and he's actually going to go off for the weekend and 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 negotiation. And the big breakthrough is everybody is now banned from having lunch in number 10 to sort it all out. And Donahieu 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. Hello, welcome back to the REST history for the final segment of our four-part epic on the single year of 1974 in Britain. Dominic, we began this episode with a bombing by the IRA of a Pub. We're going to begin this half with the bombing of another Pub by the IRA. This was in Birmingham.

Yes.

It's very vivid in my imagination because it features in Jonathan Coe's brilliant novel about growing up in Birmingham in the '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. This is six weeks after the Guilford bombing, so it's about five weeks after the general election. 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 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 bottle 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. It's the second bombing of the night. If you read the descriptions in the newspapers.

The descriptions are horrific. So a fireman recall seeing a torso with no arms or legs in a spongy mess where its head had been. The torso was not only wrinkling, it was also through the spongy mess screaming. I mean, it's so horrible.

Yeah. The firemen asked the TV crews to film some of these scenes, and the TV crews refused because they said they were too Terrific. 21 people were killed, almost 200 injured, some of them very badly. It was actually a third bomb in a wine bar. Basically, what had happened is the IRA had put a bomb in the first pub at the bottom of the rotunda. Then they planned it so that as people fled, a 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. Because it comes so soon after the Guilford 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 sectarian or backlash policy politics in Britain itself.

So what? Anti-irish programs.

Anti-irish, exactly. There were a few isolated incidents. 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 It's actually how muted.

Except that, as with Guilford, the police are looking to finger people they can blame. Again, there's another terrible miscarriage of justice, isn't there?

Yeah, the Birmingham 6. That's six men. They're Irishmen who 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.

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 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, I would argue, given his record in government, I think he actually did well to come within a... 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. I think in some parts 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. 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, Berna Donahue, 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, electorially, from people who wanted to put that off.

Wilson's political persona, I think, is one of very, very small sea conservatism by this point. It's basically, let's not frighten the horses, no conflicts with the unions, nothing that lead to any public controversy, just steady as she goes, and actually, the orderly management of decline, to some extent, Tom.

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 Bern, that you become almost a siege economy. Yes. That you thumb your nose at the power of international capital. Yes. 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. 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. On the Tony Ben thing, whatever else you say about Tony Ben, 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 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. 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. They're really frustrated by it, actually.

What happens in the months immediately after the election. Is there any sense of an election bounce?

No, not really. It's actually a whatever they're- Letting the air out of a balloon. Yeah, the air out of a balloon. No, not at all. Actually, by the end of October, Dennis Healey, 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 inflationary spiral. And in November, all the Wilson government get together, all the Wilson cabinet, they get together at checkers. This is the official country residence of the Prime Minister. They're unbelievably pessimistic about the economy. The most famous line from this meeting, a very famous line, which is a great epitaph for the '70s, comes from very much a friend of the rest of his history, Tom, James Callahan, your great hero, later Prime Minister.

They say, What do you think, Jim? Jim says, Well, when I'm shaving in the morning, I say to myself that if I were a young man, I'd emigrate. 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 is 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?

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 is the England cricket team.

I knew this was coming.

Playing against Rodney Marsh, the Australian wickkeeper, not the Manchester City striker.

A poorly behaved Manchester City striker from the last episode.

They get absolutely torn to pieces by Dennis Lilley and Jeff Thompson, the most ferocious fast bowlers. At one point, the abdominal protector, which David Lloyd, England batsman, He almost becomes a eunuch.

Oh, no.

Cracked in two. There, I'm afraid, is a metaphor, isn't it?

There is a metaphor, yeah. 1975, would you believe, the year after the election, was the first year since records began that Britain's population fell because so many people were emigrating.

There is a solution to the immigration crisis. What?

Punch our economy into the abyss.

Yeah, the Conservatives could totally crash the economy.

Well, let us end with the Conservatives. 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 hang dog. Almost immediately afterwards, there is a huge run on the pound, and Britain has to seek a humiliating, world-record bailout international monetary fund, which later becomes, of course, an item on the the Thatterite charge sheet against the 1970s and 1970s.

That and the Winter of Discontent.

Which follows later in the decade.

When there's nonstop strikes and grave diggers go on a strike and things. 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. But what's going on with Britain between the 1950s and the 1980s is much more than surface froth. It's a massive structural change.

It's a process of deindustrialization, isn't it?

Yes, it absolutely is deindustrialization.

First into industry.

And first out. What's happening, I think, in the '70s is that the Wilson government and Callahan 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. 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. The danger with doing that, of course, is you just put off the evil day and you make it worse and worse. I think there was a definite sense by the end of the '70s, and this is very palpable in the memoirs and the dires of people in the Labor government, not the Taurus, but the Labor government. There was a sense, we actually can't keep doing this forever. Something is going to have to change at some point.

In that I think the economy, the picture was worse in the '70s because people knew that what would follow would be so- It would be 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 modeled, when people said, Well, what would actually happen if we said sodo 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. 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. 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 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. 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 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 behavior. He's sulky, he's sullen, he doesn't want to talk to anybody, but it strikes him as outrageous that People would suggest that 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 rare 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 Tori Robespierre, Tom. So he's pale, he's very priggish, he's incredibly serious, he's incredibly conscientious. He's one of the rare Tauris, 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 wrive with agony.

Isn't he a mad monk?

People call him the mad monk. They call him the Mad Monk. He undergoes this extraordinary conversion experience in the course of 1974. So all this is going on from the corporatist tourism 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, today, we associate conservatism with free market economics, principally because of Mrs. Thatcher and I guess Reagan as well. But actually, letting Can 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.

But all the choices facing people in this period, whether on the far left, the right, whatever, are all pretty awful.

They are. Theo has written in the That, hence the term neoconservative. But actually, Theo, the real term is neoliberal. A lot of real Tom Holland style, well, the people that Tom was ventriloquising, so Patricia consensual Taurus who fought in tank battles in 1944.

Thick glasses.

Now with thick glasses. 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. They would later say this of Mrs. Thatcher. Now, Keith Joseph doesn't think this. He has been converted to this neoliberalism. 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. Do you know what? He's going to do it, and Mrs. Thatcher will be his campaign manager. Then, like Enoch Powell before him, Joseph makes the terrible mistake of going to Birmingham to give a speech. 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. 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. 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. Is he verging on saying that?

Well, he doesn't use the words racial stock. I think it's fair to say, Tom. I think he would be appalled. I mean, he's Jewish himself, by the way. Yes, of course. Harold MacMillon, rather cruelly, said he was the only boring Jew I've ever known. Yes. 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 in the satirical magazine, because of his enthusiasm for birth control, took to calling him Sir Sheath instead of Sir Keith. I think people just thought he's gone mad. He basically thinks, Oh, I've made a terrible mistake. He effectively bowels out. He goes around the House of Commons in November. It's only six weeks or so the election saying to people, Oh, I'm not going to do it. Because also, he's not really cut out to be a leader anyway.

He's a Prince Hamlet figure, isn't he?

He is an absolute. He's dithery.

He delays. 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 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 Tori leadership against Ted Heath. Dennis said, You must be out of your mind. You haven't got a hope. You haven't got a hope. She ignores Dennis, obviously. Four days later, she goes to see Ted Heath in his office She says to him, Ted, I'm going to stand against you for the leadership or whatever. Ted Heath, all he says is, You'll lose. Tom, the rest is history. Brilliant.

So much more to come. The '70s, the Labor Government.

We should get into that next year because next year will be the anniversary, Tom, of her becoming Tori leader. Very exciting. The perfect opportunity to do a series on the late '70s.

James Callahan.

The public, I think, they're desperate to hear a series of podcasts about James Callahan.

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

Tom, it's nice trying to podcast with you feeling more cheerful. Yeah.

On that cheery note, thank you very much for listening. And bye-bye.

Bye-bye.