Who Dares Wins

The author should be congratulated not only for the work that went into the book but also for making the finished product an engaging read.The book does fall into the trap of having many whimsical and self-indulgent asides relaying the author’s attachment to films and TV shows of the era that he grew up with. These passages could have been dispensed with.Aside from these self-indulgences, and with regard to both the style and the substance of the book’s main account, let me highlight a device that the author relies on far too much. This is the device of, essentially, saying: The received wisdom on subject X is a myth, and I’m going to hammer home how factually wrong it is. This is a legitimate device in itself but, unfortunately, the author uses it even in cases in which there are plenty of prominent works (on the subject under consideration) that didn’t articulate the myth and so predated the author in being “correct.” Even more unfortunately, the author is incorrect in some cases in purporting to correct alleged myths.Here are a few examples of these problems, taken mainly from the early parts of the book. The list also includes some examples later in the book.1. On pages xxx to xxxi, Sandbrook makes a reasonable case that it is less anachronistic and less charged to refer to Margaret Thatcher as “Mrs. Thatcher” rather than “Thatcher.” But in the course of articulating this case, he states: “her biographers all call her ‘Mrs. Thatcher’” (p. xxx). No, not all do. For example, Nicholas Wapshott and George Brock’s 1983 Thatcher: The Major New Biography called her “Thatcher.”2. Page xxxv states: “What this book shows is that many of the things people believe about Mrs. Thatcher and the early 1980s are just not true… It is not true that she cut [government] spending, since spending kept on rising…” This is a non sequitur. Momentum in public expenditure means that government spending tends to rise in nominal and real terms over time, so the fact of a rise in a particular period does not mean that cuts did not occur. The Thatcher Government did implement cuts that lowered the growth curve of U.K. government spending, and in fiscal year 1982/83 the level of public spending was over 5 percent less in real terms than the projection in the Callaghan Government’s January 1979 White Paper (Peter Riddell, The Thatcher Government, 1985, pages 70 to 71).3. The same page suggests that the book will correct the record by establishing that “she [Thatcher] had an intensely romantic sense of Britain’s history.” Wow, this is correcting a preexisting myth? Charles Moore’s biography (volume 1) of Margaret Thatcher referred to “her romanticism about Britain’s past” (p. 175) and “her romantic sense of history” (p. 300), while Robin Harris’ one-volume biography of the same year (2013) stated (p. 221): “Margaret Thatcher did not have much historical sense, merely some rather romantic and fanciful historical notions.”4. Page 17 states: “Industrial employment had peaked in the mid-1950s.” This is not correct. Industrial employment is a wider concept than manufacturing employment. Manufactured-industries employment peaked in 1956, but employment in production industries did not peak until 1966 (British Labour Statistics Historical Abstract 1886-1968, 1971, pp. 248-249).5. Page 46 makes the extraordinary statement that “Mrs. Thatcher never sought to dissociate herself from her party’s history.” It is very well known that she dissociated herself from the Heath leadership’s economic policies of 1971-1975. She herself described herself in these terms: “what we were fighting for was a reversal not just of the Wilson-Callaghan approach but of the Heath Government’s approach” (The Path to Power, 1995, p. 456). Thatcher was also (retrospectively) critical of economic policy as practiced after the late 1950s, particularly from 1962 to 1964, by pre-Heath Conservative governments.6. I find the author’s own attempt to find a distinction between Thatcher’s and Heath’s views extraordinary (p. 51). His answer: Thatcher’s public invocation of religion! Can’t believe he claimed that item as a difference between Heath and Thatcher. Heath actually WROTE A BOOK on Christmas carols (i.e., religious songs) and, prior to that, conducted at least one televised carols ceremony as prime minister.7. In elaborating this case, Sandbrook gives an example of Thatcher’s religious focus: “Even wage restraint was a ‘moral responsibility.’ This was not just the kind of thing senior politicians said.” In fact, one of the defining aspects of Thatcher’s economic policy vis a vis Heath/Callaghan/Wilson was its ending (eschewing) of forced or governmentally organized private-sector wage restraint as a national policy instrument. In contrast, her predecessors made this instrument a central weapon against inflation and, in pursuing this policy, they were profligate in invoking patriotic and moral appeals for wage restraint.8. On page 87, Michael Heseltine is described as a Heath loyalist. In fact, Heseltine voted for Thatcher over Heath in the 1975 Conservative party leadership vote.9. The United Kingdom in 1981 was not the first case of a major Western oil exporter, contrary to what is stated on page 93.10. An example provided of press criticism of monetarism emerging early is that a Guardian piece criticized monetarism "as early as 1977" (p. 95) specifically in an edition of October 28, 1977 . In fact, Anthony Harris, had a critical article, “Help to Stop Friedmanism,” much earlier, in The Guardian of November 19, 1969 (Edward Nelson, "Milton Friedman and U.K. Economic Policy, 1938-1979," Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Working Paper, 2009, p. 61).11. On pages 96 and 97, the author makes two consecutive mistakes about the Sterling M3 money-supply measure, first by calling it "sterling" and leaving out the "M3" (p. 96) then by misstating this measure as including nondeposit funds and securities (p. 97).12. Page 106 incorrectly states that government spending rose every year under Thatcher. This is actually true only of her first term. In her second term, it fell in one year (financial year 1985/1986) and the same was true of her third term (financial year 1988/1989).13. The quotation from the Daily Mirror (December 31, 1979) on page 115 is not an exactly accurate quote. It's true that minor deviations in renditions of quotes from the original are near-inevitable in a project that (admirably) uses so many quotes from multiple sources.14. It's dubious economics to suppose as the author does, on page 140, that nationalization of an industry is a logical step if its investment is low.15. Page 141 states that the Conservatives' 1979 manifesto did not mention privatization plans at all. This is an overstatement.16. On page 188, it's incorrectly implied that the UK Treasury, rather than a statutorily independent statistical agency, produces the UK's price and unemployment data.17. It's not the case that Callaghan introduced incomes policy in response to Wilson Government overspending (p. 193). Callaghan inherited Wilson's incomes policy.18. Page 195 incorrectly implies that Wilson, who became a peer in 1983, was a member of the House of Lords in 1980.19. The author seems (contrary to his practice elsewhere in the book) to be rounding decimal points to full numbers in reporting inflation data on page 197: for example, 1982's 8.6 percent is given as 9 percent.20. On page 201, the author states that unemployment fell under the 1974-1976 Wilson tenure. In fact, it rose under Heath through early 1972, then fell through the end of 1973, then rose from December 1973 under Heath and then Wilson, ending up when Wilson left in the spring of 1976 at roughly double the rate that he inherited in March 1974. (Incidentally, Professor Sandbrook, if you’re going to write so much about monetary policy, why not cite work on this period written by monetary economists, instead of constantly tapping the output of those working outside this field?)21. Chapter 11, “She’s Lost Control,” is told out of chronological order and, via this narrative choice, treats initial verdicts that were later corrected by more evidence as though they are the last word on the matter in question. In particular, Sandbrook *first* relates how the “secret report” (p. 259; actually, it was widely circulated outside the government and issued publicly in the USA in early 1982) by Jurg Niehans determined in early 1981 that monetary policy since 1979 had been very tight. Having discussed this, Sandbrook *then* goes on for the rest of the chapter to discuss developments in 1980–not 1981, as a chronological account would require—and largely takes as fact the subsequently corrected impression at the time that monetary conditions were loose. Note also that Ted Heath had spoken out publicly in favor of a change of economic policy before the late October/early November 1980 period, contrary to what is implied on pages 271 to 273. The same discussion of 1980 neglects the fact that the government had already started cutting the policy interest rate before autumn of that year.22. Page 426 takes Tony Benn's 1981 likening of SDP policies to fascism as an especially extreme sentiment and special to Benn. But the anti-incomes-policy part of the Labour Party had a standard negative perspective of the center party's advocacy of mandatory wage policies that focused on the corporatist heritage of such policies. For example, Michael Foot stated of the Liberal Party incomes policy: "In my opinion, that leads to the corporate state. Indeed, Jeremy Thorpe had better brush up... on Benito Mussolini..." (Yorkshire Post, September 25, 1974.)23. A footnote on p. 442 notes that in her memoirs of her time in office, Margaret Thatcher indicated that a lower-budget-deficit target in the 1981 Budget was imposed on the Treasury by Number 10 Downing Street. Sandbrook asserts that this account is contradicted by the official documents and implies that Thatcher was simply lying. But there is much evidence that the lower target was indeed imposed by Number 10, and that outcome is perfectly consistent with the documents indicating that the nitty-gritty of lowering the deficit (the choice of tax measures, etc.) was left to the Treasury. Indeed, this division of labor was indicated by Alan Walters in his contribution at the end of the 2004 book Money Matters.24. The references to a "narrative" and "nuclear option" in discussions of 1981 political developments on pp. 447 and 448 are anachronistic and take the reader out of the period.25. In the effort to stress the economic extremism of Tony Benn and his supporters, the author claims that "Benn never talked about the implications for borrowing, taxes and inflation" (p. 533): in fact, he likely did discuss these implications to some degree.26. On page 621 and on various other pages, the Evening Standard should be the New Standard (its name at the time).26. Page 694 incorrectly takes December 1981 as a recession period.27. On page 720, Victor Keegan is described as the "economics editor" of The Guardian. He was actually its Business Editor (not the same thing).28. On page 740, The Guardian of February 25 1982 is cited as picking up the reporting in "La Prensa" of plans for an invasion of the Falklands island. The "La Prensa" article was actually followed up much earlier in the English-language press by the Dublin newspaper Sunday Independent of February 7 1982.29. On pages 764 and 903, the Newsweek issue cited, given as April 10, 1982, should be April 19, 1982 (there was no April 10 edition, and the April 19 edition would not have been published as early as April 10, either). On the same page, there is the odd assertion that "many" UK soldiers did not seriously expect to fight on a foreign field prior to the Falklands crisis. This neglects the high degree of East/West tensions in the preceding years and the corresponding weight attached during this period to the possibility of a pan-European land or combined land/nuclear war on the European.30. The quotations on page 804 from the House of Commons session of June 14, 1982 may be accurate reporting of the Hansard text but it differs from the actual words spoken in the audio of the occasion. In particular, Thatcher actually said “will” not “shall” and what Foot said differs from the quoted text in multiple ways.31. Page 834 gives the impression that the early June 1982 opinion poll was a post-Falklands War poll. It would have been better to use a July poll, as in Lord Longford’s book Eleven At Number Ten.In addition, there are dozens of places in the book in which the author incorrectly uses "Given" (which should not precede the reason for or cause of something) to mean "Because of" or "On account of," and quite a few times when "down to" should be "due to." There are some other outright cases in which the wrong word is used—for example, “they” is the wrong word near the end of page 703, “eyes” should be “ears” on page 752, and “podium” should be “lectern” on page 804.The author should also consider the fact that it's not improper or unusual for senior politicians to have junior aides, or for their subordinates to accept such positions and, in light of this, might reconsider whether such aides should be routinely given pejorative labels such as "factotum" as they are in the book. At the other extreme, the author is trigger-happy in referring to writers who have written on the period as “historians.” Journalists who write books about historical events are journalists not historians, so why not embrace and be happy with that fact and not call them “historians,” a word that holds connotations of holding a graduate degree in history? Also, the phrase “the irony is that” is used profligately throughout the book and, in the process, the term “irony” is occasionally misused (for example, I for one do not consider it ironic for someone to support a country’s going to war even if they have doubts about winning it—see the usage of “irony” on page 768). Toward the end of the book there is an extremely frequent and jarring use of the phrase “go for it.”

I’m a big fan of Dominic Sandbrook’s previous books in this series and have eagerly awaited this one.A great read that rattles along and he effortlessly weaves together popular culture with high politics.His use of the mass observation reports gives a good grounding to what ordinary people were thinking and I had to smile at the renaming of them as Wolves players from 1980!I find his central thesis very compelling, that post war affluence had a slow but sure impact upon ordinary working people and transformed their lifestyles, attitudes and ultimately for some, their voting intentions. The Labour Party either refused to acknowledge this or just didn’t see it and by the mid to late 70s had nothing to say to these emerging voters. We will no doubt see in the following books how this continued to be the case until Blair.The book is also strong on the reality that bad though the economic recession of the late 70s early 80s was, it simply didn’t impact upon everybody in the same way. Too many other books that cover this era seem ideologically spiteful in comparison and would have you believe that people took to the streets of a regular basis in some form of agit prop fantasy, as opposed to the sporadic albeit very unpleasant rioting that did occur. Sandbrook is surely right to work on the assumption that most people aren’t that interested in politics and so his coverage seems far more realistic. Well done Dominic let’s hope the next volume in the series follows reasonably soon.

Well, I liked this latest tome from the talented Dominic Sandbrook, as it is laced with his usual wit and sharp eye for detail. The period concerned is very interesting from so many different angles and most of the things I like; Lewis Collins, Blake's 7, Oi! music and Wolverhampton Wanderers crop up (the listing of the Mass Observation people using the surnames of the Wolves 1980 League Cup win was a masterstroke). Britain really was a clash of cultures as the 70s drew to a close; full of different musical tribes all seeking an identity in a rapidly changing world of economic theory and the ever present fear of nuclear Armageddon. Of course, given the time period, the book is dominated by the influence of Margaret Thatcher and young Dom is certainly in thrall to her legacy - although he is also critical of her when appropriate. There is not much to find fault in throughout the book, although I wanted to see more punk in it, as the 79-82 period was really interesting with the emergence of the Anarcho scene, best demonstrated by Crass. Indeed, I was surprised the Crass song 'Sheep Farming in the Falklands' was not included during the lengthy chapter on the Falklands war. The anti-nuclear leaning of the punk scene at the time is also not touched upon, apart from references to punks at anti-war demos.In short, this is a very good book that anyone around the age of 55 should enjoy, provided they voted for Thatcher and not for Michael Foot.

Dominic Sandbrook continues his vast history of Great Britain from the 1960s up to the present day. This is the fifth immense volume (weighing in at almost a thousand pages) and extends from Margaret Thatcher’s general election victory in May 1979 until the victorious conclusion of the Falklands War in 1982.I should say straight away that I am a huge fan of Dominic Sandbrook, and feel that this is his finest book yet, although I recognise that that might simply reflect my greater familiarity with, and recollection of, the events about which he writes. Where he excels is in drawing together, without any semblance of artifice, so many different strands of life. He gives a detailed account of the political issues dominating day to day life, but also sheds light on prevailing trends in entertainment, literature and music, as well as changing aspects to domestic life.A thousand pages for just three years might seem excessive, but those three years saw almost seismic shifts in British life. Political commentators had expected Prime Minister James Callaghan to call an election during late summer or autumn 1978, but he chose instead to let his tenure run for full term. That proved to be a fatal misjudgement. Not only was he beset by what came to be known as the ‘Winter of Discontent’, with public service unions bringing many elements of daily life to a standstill through concerted industrial action, exacerbated by a particularly harsh winter, but he fell foul of Scottish and Welsh Nationalists.Callaghan had inherited No. 10 from his predecessor, Harold Wilson, who had stepped down from the premiership in 1976 in response (as we now know, although it was never acknowledged at the time) to signs of the early onset of dementia. Callaghan was a benign and popular figure, and is the only person to have held any four great offices of state (Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary). He is, unfortunately, now generally remembered for having presided over the Winter of Discontent, and for losing the parliamentary confidence vote which led to the May election that brought Mrs Thatcher to power. Wilson has secured a very small majority in the autumn election in 1974, but that had gradually been eroded throughout the course of the parliament, leaving Callaghan dependent upon the support of the small Scottish Nationalist Party and Plaid Cymru cohorts within the House.It is always tempting (if pointless) to speculate about the ‘What if?’ moments of history. If Callaghan had gone to the country in autumn 1978, as most of the pundits anticipated, would he have won? If so, the whole course of British political history would have been completely different. Mrs Thatcher would almost certainly have been deposed as Conservative leader, perhaps to be replaced by a rival of more moderate views.It was not just the Winter of Discontent that led to Callaghan’s defeat. On 1 March 1979 voters in both Wales and Scotland voted in respective referenda about the issue of independence. A majority of those voting in Scotland did indeed opt for independence. They did not, however, do so in sufficient numbers to meet the additional criterion insisted upon by Callaghan’s Westminster government, that, as well as a majority of votes actually cast, at least forty per cent of the total electorate in each country had to support independence. On a snowy and painfully cold day, overall turnout in Scotland was too low for the vote to cross that hurdle, and the bid for independence failed. The SNP and Plaid Cymru immediately withdrew their support for Callaghan’s government, rendering it only a matter of time before it succumbed to a vote of confidence. ‘Like turkeys voting for Christmas’, was Callaghan’s verdict, before he bowed to the inevitable and, having lost a crucial confidence vote, fell back upon the whim of the electorate.Mrs Thatcher is one of the most divisive figures in British political history, but one who is now generally the subject of rampant vituperation. Having just turned sixteen, I was too young to vote in the 1979 election, but contrary to the revisionist view prevalent today, I remember the feeling almost of euphoria when Mrs Thatcher emerged victorious from that election. This was, it is true, more a feeling that change … any change … had to be welcome. Things had been so relentlessly grim over the preceding seven or eight months that any sort of new start was welcome. Of course, no-one would have believed in May 1979 that the Conservatives would remain in power for the next eighteen years, and, as if to prove Santayana’s adage about the cyclical nature of history, there was the same sense of euphoria or relief when Tony Blair’s New Labour finally ousted them.The Falklands War proved to be the pivotal moment in Margaret Thatcher’s first term as Prime Minister. Indeed, if Argentina had not invaded the Falkland Islands, it is unlikely that she would have secured even a second term, far less a third. The British economy plummeted during her first years as Prime Minister, and unemployment soared, extending beyond three million. Of course, this was particularly ironic given the success of the Conservatives’ election campaign, a key element of which had been billboards showing huge queues outside a Job Centre with the slogan, ‘Labour isn’t working’. Even senior figures within her own party was starting to challenge her approach. During the opening years of her premiership, Britain saw vicious riots spreading throughout the country, in places as far apart as Brixton, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Cardiff.Sandbrook captures all of this and far more, and renders it all very accessibly, and offers some very wry observations along the way.

It's been a long wait since Seasons In The Sun which took Dominic Sandbrook's history of post war Great Britain up to 1979 and the fall of the Labour government of James Callaghan. I've enjoyed reading all of Mr Sandbrook's books since You've Never Had It So Good and this is in the same vein as it's predecessors combining a mix of cultural,political and social events of the era up to the end of the Falklands War. It's a very entertaining read highly recommended, if I had a slight reservation I thought that it was it a bit easy on Margaret Thatcher and rather hard on Tony Benn. However I hope that Mr Sandbrook will soon take up the challenge of the next book in the series.

In this latest instalment of his modern history series Sandbrook takes us on the rollercoaster ride from Margaret Thatcher's triumphant entry to Downing Street in 1979 [the first general election I was eligible to vote in, and no even though I was in Guildford I didn't vote conservative but that didn't stop David Howell getting a 20,000 majority!] through the down-turn years of mass unemployment, riots and racial prejudice, to the mass adulation of the Falklands victory.Like his previous volumes, while giving us a detailed insight to the political shenanigans: cabinet comings and goings, infighting surrounding the Prime Minister, Labour's left-led implosion, the rise of the Gang of Four, and the special relationship between Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, Sandbrook pauses to give us loads of cultural references from the Mini Metro to Ian Botham, Steve Davis, Seb Coe and Steve Cram via the New Romantics.Once again this is a wonderful record of this short period of recent history; this is fascinating stuff for those of us who were there but don't remember it too well. And while Sandbrook's style is to tell the story as it actually happened it leaves you wondering what if ..., what if the Gang of Four had really succeeded in breaking the mould of two party politics, what if Thatcher had given-in before unemployment reached three million, what if the Falklands hadn't happened or, worse still Britain had failed to regain the islands? Where would that have left Mrs. Thatcher? But quite rightly that's fiction not history and has no place in this book but a little more analysis of the alternatives wouldn't have gone amiss.So why only 4 stars? My grumble is that 1982 was not really the end of this part of the story, that didn't come until June 1983 when, with the economy improving, Labour in disarray, and the Falklands victory still a recent memory the Conservative's won a landslide general election victory (majority of 144 seats) and the start of Mrs. Thatcher second term (and hopefully the next instalment in this series).Come on Dominic let's have the next instalment.