Major's government

Political satire

• Magazine Private Eye first appeared in 1961 - mocked the pomposity of public figures/the absurdities of their behaviour

• Spitting Image (ITV) and Yes Minister (BBC) - aired in the 1980s

• In Spitting Image, Major was portrayed as literally a grey figure, boringly consumed with the unimportant details of life

• Spitting Image 1984-96

When was poll tax withdrawn?

1991

What did Major replace poll tax with?

Council Tax - tax on domestic property, bands regarding property value (same for each property inside each band)

When did Council Tax come into place?

Introduced in 1993 by the Local Government Finance Act 1992

1992 election - why might Labour have lost?

• Ill-conceived rally in Sheffield a week before the election - in the style of US politics, the Labour campaigners put on an extravaganza with blaring music and announcements na spotlights picking up shadow cabinet members who walked to the platform. Neil Kinnock exchanged repetitive shouts with the audience.

• Labour shadow budget - threatened large increased in taxation

1992 election - why might Labour have lost - Major/Conservatives?

• Stood on a soap-box and suggested in a homely way that only the Tories could be trusted to run the economic

• The Sun switched support from Labour to Conservative

1992 election outcome

Major won 14m votes (the highest Tory vote share ever) in 1992

The Maastricht Treaty - when

Major signed Britain up to it in February 1992

The Maastricht Treaty - what was it?

Terms:

• Full European integration

• A common European foreign policy

• A common European defence policy

• A European Central Bank

• A single European currency, the Euro, to be adopted by 1999 → Britain obtained an opt-out clause on this

• Treaty to come into effect in 1993

Black Wednesday - what was ERM

• Summer 1992 → crisis regarding ERM

• ERM had been devised as a system of reducing inflation

• Was to be done by creating parity between the various European currencies by pegging them to the value of the Deutschmark (Europe’s strongest currency at the time) rather than let them find their market value

• i.e. designed to reduce exchange rate volatility

Black Wednesday - lead up

• When Pound joined it in 1990 it was one of the weakest currencies - exchange value was unrealistically high at DM2.95

• This made British exports overpriced

Black Wednesday - when

16 September 1992

Black Wednesday - what

• September 1992 international bankers sensed the pound sterling was overvalued (at DM2.95) - began to speculate against it on the money markets → flood of selling it on foreign stock exchanges

• Pound therefore began to fall sharply

• Lamond, chancellor, raised interest rates from 10% to 15% - pound looks better

• He sold off £30b of UK’s foreign reserves - to buy sterling

• All did not work - pressure on pound too great

• 16 September 1992 withdrew from ERM - Black Wednesday

Consequences of withdrawing from ERM

• Case for Britain’s becoming involved in European monetary union weakened (hence opt-out clause)

• Euro-sceptics arguments strengthened

• Tories’ image of financial expertise damaged

• Labour gained 15 point lead in opinion polls

• Cabinet divisions widened between Eurosceptics, e.g. Michael Portillo + Peter Lilley, and pro-Europeans such as Kenneth Clarke + Heseltine.

Further consequences of ERM withdrawal (good economic)

• Pound actually began to recover - by 1996 the exchange rate of the Pound was DM3 - this was a higher rate than during the ERM

• 1995-2005 growth rate economically was 2.7% vs 1.5% for France

Maastricht rebels - who were they

Up to 40 Tory MPs who defied Major’s government, aiming to block the ratification of the Treaty on European Union

Maastricht rebels - what did they do

Voted against the party in key parliamentary votes during 1992-3.

This showed opposition to Major’s leadership and policy direction, which would have rendered the party unpopular in the eyes of voters (who would have liked Major to have total control over his MPs).

Maastricht rebels - key example

1993 organised resistance by the Euro-Rebels (led by Bill Cash and supported by most of the party’s Eurosceptics who fought against Maastricht ratification) → July 1993 defeated a bill necessary for the treaty to come into effect in November 1993

Leads to confidence vote

Desperate means used by Major to get Maastricht through

• Reintroduced the proposal to accept the Maastricht Treaty and made it part of a formal vote of confidence in the government

• Proposal was forced through as if the Euro-Sceptic Tory MPs had voted against it then the government would have been brought down

• These desperate means gave strength to the growing numbers of Eurosceptics inside and outside Parliament

• He also rejected referendum

Labour and Maastricht

• Now led by John Smith

• Officially accepted Maastricht

Major and the Maastricht rebels

Major - recorded on tape describing his critics within the Cabinet as ‘bastards’ → widely assumed as referring to Peter Lilley, Portillo, John Redwood, and Michael Howard

NOT FULL SUPPORT OF CABINET

Leadership election - when

Summer of 1995

Leadership election - outcome

Major easily won - defeated Redwood 218 to 89

But clear that (with abstentions added in) over 100 members were not committed to him being leader

‘Back to Basics’ campaign - when

1993

‘Back to Basics’ campaign - what

Was intended as a nostalgic appeal to traditional values such as neighbourliness, though was widely interpreted in the media as a campaign for socially conservative causes such has the traditional family.

‘Back to Basics’ campaign rendered ironic (scandals)

• Steven Norris, the married transport minister, who was revealed to have five mistresses less than aa fortnight after Major’s campaign.

• David Mellor, a high-profile UK Cabinet minister, resigned in September 1992 following a sustained tabloid campaign regarding his extramarital affair with actress Antonia de Sancha

Scandals - tabloid coverage

The Sun with David Mellor, as well as The People newspaper who said he was wearing the Chelsea football kit when having sex

Scandals - perhaps overexaggerated impact

Steven Norris was able to retain his transport brief and the uproar died away quickly as his wife gave her consent.

‘Cash for Questions’- what

1994 scandals, Neil Hamilton etc. accused of accepting money (from businessman Mohamed Al Fayed) to ask questions in parliament – exposed corruption in the Party

Neil Hamilton/Cash for Questions outcome

• Media coverage, was revealed by The Guardian

• Hamilton denied the allegations, and a series of libel actions followed

• Martin Bell as a random independent – ousts Neil Hamilton 1997 election in his Tatton constituency - majority of 11,000

First Gulf War - when

1991

First Gulf War - how was Major effective?

• Cooperated well with USA in creating a coalition invasion force

• Coalition invasion force - 1991, in keeping with UN resolutions, successfully ended the illegal occupation of Kuwait by forces of Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein

• Major also kept Kinnock and Ashdown (opposition leaders) informed on key moves

Bosnia - when

1995

Bosnia - what happened

Followed break-up in early 1990s of formed federal state of Yugoslavia - complex civil war fought between a set of competing national religious and ethnic groups

Bosnia 1992-5 vicious fighting - international powers intervened to prevent the genocide of the largely Muslim Bosnian population by the largely Christian Serb forces

Bosnia - UK involvement militarily

• Britain contributed in a series of Nato aerial attacks on Serbian forces in August and September 1995

• Over 3500 sorties flown

Bosnia - Dayton peace agreement

• Signed December 1995

• Warring parties agreed to keep to certain designated areas, which would be monitored by UN and NATO forces

• Major was one of the signatories when Dayton agreement was ratified in Paris

1991 IRA action

Fired mortar bombs at 10 Downing Street from a parked van - prelude to a sustained bombing campaign in Britain

March 1993 IRA

A boy of 3 and another 12 people were killed by bombs in litter bins in a shopping mall in Warrington

When was the Downing Street Declaration?

1993

What was the Downing Street Declaration?

Meeting of Albert Reynolds (Taoiseach, Irish PM) and John Major. Form this agreement

Contents of the Downing Street Declaration

• British government announced that it had no selfish or strategic interest in Northern Ireland - sole concern was to accede to the democratically expressed wishes of people there

• Accepted that if the Irish (N+S) wanted it was for them to bring about a united Ireland

• Reynolds declared that the Irish Republic accepted the right of the majority in Northern Ireland to decide its future

• He also accepted that if a democratic settlement could be achieved there, the South was prepared to drop its traditional claim that Northern Ireland was part of the Republic

Outcome of DSD

Pathway to ceasefire in 1994, FOUNDATION FOR THE GOOD FRIDAY AGREEMENT IN 1998 (many of the principles in the Declaration found here - especially principle of consent)

IRA Ceasefire - when

August 1994

Ceasefire - why

Unofficial contacts between British government and Sinn Fein eventually convinced IRA that declaration had recognised the key republican and nationalist positions on the status of N.I., and that Britain was not committed to indefinite control of the province

Loyalist units - ceasefire?

• Major assured them that the British government had no intention of forcing the North into a united Ireland either

• October 1994 loyalist units announce would have ceasefire

Did ceasefire hold?

Not really - 1996 and 1998 frequent outbursts of renewed violence - the two sets of paramilitaries did not trust each other

Mitchell Report - when?

Jan 1996

What was the Mitchell Report?

• After Clinton visited Dublin and Belfast, Senator George Mitchell (USA) chaired an international commission set up to consider the Irish issue

• Major accepted the commission as offering a way forward - accepting peaceful measures and being patient

• Report:

• Total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations and their renunciation of force

• Agreement by all parties concerned to accept as binding any agreement reached in an all-party negotiation

Did IRA eventually disarm

Yes - by 2005

1997 election - percentage of vote difference Labour vs Tory

Labour had 13% more of the vote

Second largest no. votes Labour (1951 more)

Major and by-elections

Tories lost all the by-elections during Major’s year in office