Heath's government 1970-4

When was the Industrial Relations Act

1971

Aims of the Industrial Relations Act

• Formal registration of unions

• Stop ‘wildcat strikes’/flying pickets

• Legality - placing unions under confines of the law

Features of the Industrial Relations Bill

• NIRC (National Industrial Relations Court) → take unions to a form of tribunal to hold them account if they don’t follow some of the other rules of Bill

• Registration with government

• NIRC used if they followed through with ‘wildcat’ strikes or flying pickets (i.e. illegal strikes)

As soon as the IRB passed, what did the TUC do?

Formally voted not to cooperate with the government’s measures, called on the individual unions to refuse to register - collective rejection of registration → HEATH AND HIS CABINET APPEARS INCOMPETENT

Did the IRB succeed in terms of placing unions under the confines of the law?

No - unions/the TUC refused to attend Court Sessions and refused to pay fines

Control of unions - succeed?

No → roughly 5% of unions initially registered, but by 1974 none are registered

Did the NIRC manage to sanction unions for illegal strikes?

No - NIRC failed to sanction any workers effectively

1972 strike

joint bid to gain a wage increase and to highlight the increasing no. pit closures that threatened its members’ livelihood, the NUM (Scargill) called a strike → used flying pickets to prevent the movement of coal

Flying pickets were illegal

This seriously disrupts fuel and electricity supplies and considerably reduced industrial production

No. strikes 1971 vs 1974 approx.

Over 2,200 vs just under 3,000 = Industrial Relations Bill clearly does not limit the number of strikes itself

Economic early measures of Barber (as chancellor)

• Income tax cuts

• Reductions in government spending

• Scrapping of the Prices and Incomes Board

• Cuts in the subsidies paid to local authorities

Whatever popularity Barber may have gained from workers for lifting restrictions on wage bargaining, was lost by his tax obsession to high earners and cuts in government spending → effects included a rise in council house rents

Housing Finance Act 1972, all local authorities were forced to increase their rents by £1 a week (around 50%).

Unpopular Thatcher act as secretary for education

Cut in government spending - withdrawal of free milk for school children

What had inflation risen to by the end of 1971

15%

U-turn 1972 what did the government announce (regarding the economy)

In an attempt to curb inflation it was returning to a policy of controlling prices and incomes

Return to controlling prices and incomes in 1973 - info

• New Price Commission and a Pay Board supervised pay increases (like the NBPI had)

• 1973 → people’s wages could not go up by more than 7% a year

• But inflation is much worse at this stage

• New policy’s primary purpose was to manage the national economy by curbing inflation through the surveillance and restriction of wage increases, price rises, and dividends

1972 budget and Barber Boom

taking off credit restrictions that Labour put on in the 1960s - said incomes policy would keep inflation down. but this policy was only going to fuel inflation

Inflation - did it increase?

Yes - peaking at nearly 25% in 1975

Other Heath u-turn

Abandoned notion of non-intervention by government - DTI began to help companies

Rolls-Royce - orders falling and was haemorrhaging money - government nationalised it in 1971 - it would then be sustained by government grants

It manufactures lots of equipment for MOD

Heath u-turn - other companies

Subsidies granted to other private companies in difficulties, such as the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders - determined resistance from workers when threat that this Scottish company might be closed - feared industrial action might become violent

Subsidy of £34m

Yom-Kippur War

October 1973 -> the Arab nation-launched surprise attack on Israel (Yom Kippur War)

OPEC and Yom Kippur War

OPEC -> announced an embargo on oil for any countries supporting the Israelis in the war, which included USA and Britain

Embargo on oil effects on price of oil

In March 1974, OAPEC lifted the embargo, but the price of oil had risen by nearly 300%

Britain recession and inflation

OPEC economic effects (i.e. of the oil price rise) in Britain

• B.O.P deficit rose to around £3.5b

• Unemployment - 1974-6 figures more than doubled to almost 1.3m and remained high for rest of decade

OPEC - effects inside Britain

Government needs coal -> no cheap imports of oil from Middle East -> miners could cut off supplies + plunge Britain into darkness

Coal miners (NUM) demand 35% wage increase

3-day week

Declared in December 1973 that 'most industrial/commercial premises would be limited in the use of electricity only 3 days a week

Example of ‘state of emergency’ things for public

No TV after 10:30

‘End’ of crisis with miners

NUM eventually gained 21% wage increase - but NUM more strikes early 1974 - Heath had to call an immediate election on the issue of who ran the country, the miners or the government

1974 (February) General Election

• Critical no. voters judged him to have been a failure, even if not an overwhelming defeat for Heath

• His government had achieved none of the economic goals it had set itself on taking office 4 years prior:

• Rapid inflation → holding down of prices impossible

• Wage demands of unions, lots of days lost through strikes = decline in productivity. Almost 15m days lost in 1974

• Unemployment - 1972 highest figure for joblessness since Depression 1930s

• 3-day week bad

February election turnout

• Tory support had slipped by nearly 7 points

• Labour won 4 more seats than Tories (but also its popular vote dropped by 6%)

• Liberals increased vote by 4m

• Labour wins - Wilson second period of government

Local government act when

2 stages - 1972 and 3

Local government act

Reshaping of the structure of local government - the measures destroyed many historical administrative landmarks

Whole areas were subsumed into newly created regions and many familiar place names disappeared

e.g. Ancient counties such as Cumberland, Westmorland, Middlesex, and Huntingdonshire were removed from the administrative map.

EEC ENTRY - WHEN

1973

What happened with EEC entry

• de Gaulle retires as French president 1969

• EEC invites Britain to reapply

Advantages of Britain joining EEC

• Britain access to European markets

• Benefitted from the final end of wartime antagonisms

• European block - better chance of attracting global business

• Britain regions entitled to European development grants

• British workers could work in other EEC countries

• Greater opportunity of movement for British people within Europe

Disadvantages of joining EEC

• Britain no longer able to buy cheap food from Commonwealth

• High contributions to EEC budget than received in grants from Europe

• Common Agricultural Policy’s ‘dear food policy’ meant higher prices for British consumers

• Common Fisheries Policy restricted Britain’s right to fish in its customary grounds

• Britain had to impose VAT on most commodities

• Protectionist organisation that appeared dated in an era of global markets

EEC and Britain’s weak bargaining position

Prevailing view at time was that Britain joined because it couldn’t economically survive on its own

Britain could not negotiate from a position of strength in 1972 - no say in setting up of EEC and the existing members were not going to allow Britain as a latecomer to change workings of system

Britain - Commonwealth food and goods would no longer enter Britain on preferential terms → produce from Australia and New Zealand had a European tariff placed on it that made it decreasingly profitable for those countries to sell to Britain or beneficial to Britain to buy form them

Transition stage → but regardless, Britain had sacrificed its economic ties with the Commonwealth

EEC making Britain look weak

Britain seemed resigned to the fact that it was a declining economic force whose only chance of survival was as a member of a protectionist European organisation, which now seems to have been a brake on its progress

Ireland - 1971 internment

Ineffective as a security measure and alienated the nationalist communities (as 95% of those interned 1971-5 were Catholics); this led to a rise in the membership of the IRA

30th January 1972 Ireland

BLOODY SUNDAY - attempts to control a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march (in Londonderry) led to the British army firing on civilians, with 14 demonstrators being killed by British troops that day

Lord Widgery and Bloody Sunday

First inquiry - concluded it was the shots that had been fired at the soldiers before they started the firing that led to the casualties - seen by republicans as an attempt to condone the actions of the British army

Before Widgery Report in 1972 - Heath and Stormont

Heath’s government had taken the step of suspending the unionist-dominated Stormont Parliament and imposing direct rule of Northern Ireland from London

Widgery Report May 1972 said to make situation worse

• Convinced Catholic population further that British government was hostile

• Tensions increased between London and Dublin governments

• Gap between IRA and non-violent Social Democrats Labour Party (SDLP) widened

• Gap between Official Unionist Party and the DUP led by Paisley widened

Ireland - even larger rise in unrest after January 1972

British Embassy in Dublin was consequently burned down and there were well over 10,000 shooting incidents in 1972

Sunningdale Agreement when

1973

Sunningdale Agreement

• Backed by London and Dublin governments, the SDLP, and the Official Unionists

• Agreed to form an executive which would govern Northern Ireland on behalf of both the Catholic and Protestant communities

• First time since 1921 that Catholics had been offered representation in government

• Frightened the Unionists

Catholics still felt aggrieved

• Unemployment always affected them the most

• Continued presence of British army

• Slow progress in gaining their civil rights

• Way the law seemed tilted against them, as in the Diplock Courts - set up in 1972 to hear cases without a jury, aim was to avoid the problem of jury members’ being imtimidated

Ulster Defence Force

Mirror image of the Provincial IRA

Sunningdale Agreement opposition and issues

The 1973 Sunningdale Agreement had lots of opposition, and generally the prospects of a settlement were further undermined by the problems that were going on in mainland Britain, namely the miners’ strike; concern about the Sunningdale Agreement meant that the Conservative Party could not rely on the support of the UUP, preventing the Conservatives from continuing in government.

Unionists fiercely opposed to the deal formed an anti-Sunningdale coalition called the United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC). In the February 1974 general election, the UUUC won 11 out of 12 Northern Ireland’s Westminster constituencies, effectively turning the election into a referendum against Heath’s power-sharing deal.

Ultimately, the decision by the seven Ulster Unionist MPs not to take the Conservative whip proved decisive in giving Labour a slim plurality of seats.