James Callaghan

9 Key excerpts on "James Callaghan"

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  POWERS BEHIND PRIME MINIST EB

  • Dennis Kavanagh, Anthony Seldon(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • HarperCollins

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER FIVE James Callaghan (1976–79)

  NUMBER TEN ’S most experienced incomer this century (a former Chancellor, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, and de facto Deputy Prime Minister from 1974–76) settled into his new post in April 1976 with expected assurance. James Callaghan was sixty-four: one of Wilson’s better jokes was that he had resigned ‘to make way for an older man’. He knew the ways of Whitehall and had worked with a large number of senior civil servants. Callaghan took over with an economic crisis looming and a tiny parliamentary majority, one which would not last for more than a few months. He was the first Prime Minister to be elected to the post by MPs. The oldest of the six candidates who stood for the party leadership, he was chosen as a centrist figure, the one who was best able to unify the party.

  After criticisms of the funding of Wilson’s private staff, Callaghan was determined to be different, ensuring that his Number Ten operation would be wholly ‘above board’; early on he set up a group under his first PPS, Jack Cunningham, to ensure that irregularities did not occur.1 There was something of a pre-echo of Blair’s determination after May 1997 to have a government that was ‘whiter than white’. The influence of some Wilsonian figures in Number Ten, notably Marcia Williams, was considered by the new incumbent (oddly) to have been excessive and to have contributed to a ‘bunker mentality’ in Number Ten, and he was determined that no-one would obtain a similar position in his administration.2 There would be no Callaghan ‘kitchen cabinet’.

  But in other ways, Labour’s fourth Prime Minister produced little change in substance. He saw himself as a statesman, like Churchill before him and to an extent Blair after him, as being above mere party politics. As he later wrote, his belief was that the right approach to leadership was exemplified by the Welsh maxim (suggested to him by George Thomas, the Speaker) ‘Byd ben: byd ont’ (‘He who would lead must be a bridge’).3

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  Leaders of the Opposition

  From Churchill to Cameron

  • T. Heppell(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  110 James Callaghan 1997a: 702–3; Rees, 2001). Callaghan’s post-election leadership interlude has also been treated relatively lightly in comparison with earlier (and later) periods of his political life (see, for example, Callaghan, 1988; K. Morgan, 1997a, 1999; Shaw, 1996), or viewed as largely a failure on the dimensions of strategic party leadership providing the rationale for him to remain in the post after the 1979 election defeat; as ‘essentially wasted time’ in attempting to stem the tide of left-wing demands for greater internal democracy and maintain party unity (Conroy, 2006: 136–7; K. Morgan, 1999: 148; Shaw, 1996: 164). Callaghan’s stewardship indeed coincided with a period of intense conflict and momentous change inside the Labour Party after 1979, and the chapter attempts a re-evaluation of his leadership and party management style and performance in a challenging and confrontational party and political context. It suggests that Callaghan’s leadership perspective and strategy in Opposition at this intricate juncture of Labour’s politics derived from a defensive instinct to resist what he perceived to be the fundamental threat of radical, divisive and ultimately unpopular party presentation and policy, informed by a sense of duty and traditional principles and priorities of soli- darity, party unity and moderate responsive leadership, and as such can be judged with mixed success in severely restrictive circumstances. After a series of senior government posts carried out with mixed degrees of success, Callaghan had been elected simultaneously to the leadership of his party and Prime Minister in the strange circumstances surrounding Harold Wilson’s resignation as Labour leader and Prime Minister in 1976, defeating Michael Foot in a final ballot of Labour MPs only.

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  A Century of Premiers

  Salisbury to Blair

  • D. Leonard(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 17 James Callaghan – Labour’s conservative 1 Born in obscurity, raised in hardship, a long hard struggle in the trade union movement ... This was the life story of a long list of leading Labour Party figures in the first half of the twentieth century, the most 282 1 This was the title of a profile I wrote for The Economist in the last week of his premiership, in April 1979. Twenty-five years later, I see no need to revise this judgement. James Callaghan 283 outstanding being Ernest Bevin. The last of the line was to be James Callaghan, born in Portsmouth on 27 March 1912. His father, also James, was a Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy. He came from an Irish Catholic background, and had run away to sea in his teens, chang- ing his name from Gargohan. This, together with the fact that he was half-Jewish, was quite unknown to his son until the Sun newspaper researched his genealogy after he became Prime Minister in 1976. Callaghan’s father married a very young widow, Charlotte Cundy, whose first husband had died in a naval accident. She was a strict Baptist, and the elder James gave up his religion to marry her. Their children were brought up in his new faith. There were to be two of them – Dorothy, born in 1904, and Leonard James, eight years later. He was always known as Leonard, or Len, only adopting his second name in his early thirties, when he entered politics. When Leonard was four his father was wounded in the Battle of Jutland, and after the war was transferred to less strenuous work as a coastguard at Brixham, in Devon. Here the family lived a relaxed and happy life, which came to an abrupt end in 1921 when the old sailor, still only 44, collapsed and died from a heart attack. Charlotte was dev- astated, and the family descended into near poverty, as she received only a small lump sum and no pension from the Board of Admiralty.

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  The Prime Ministers

  Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to Johnson

  • Steve Richards(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Atlantic Books

    (Publisher)

  Callaghan was a pragmatist, working with whoever he needed to and often changing with the flow of the tides. He was against the Common Market until the UK joined, after which he recognized that departure would be counter-productive. He was against incomes policies until he feared that no other option was available to him, at which point he favoured incomes policies. He was an ardent trade unionist out of conviction and self-interested calculation. When self-interest and conviction demanded a different response, he became less ardent. Callaghan was a poor reader of long-term political and economic trends, but he was flexibly astute at responding to the more immediate rhythms. He could be stubborn until he sensed a need to change, and then he could swiftly pull a reverse gear.

  Given these agile attributes, at odds with his apparent rigid old-fashioned politics, here is another riddle: why did Callaghan quickly become an unfashionable prime minister, referred to dismissively (if at all) in the decades that followed? This is a leader whom Denis Healey, a figure who was not easily impressed, placed second only to Attlee in the pantheon of Labour leaders.20 Shelves creak with books on Attlee. There are few on Callaghan.

  Part of the answer is obvious. Prime ministers who serve briefly at the end of an era, and without winning an election with their own distinctive agenda, are easily dismissed. Roy Jenkins, who had more curiosity about leaders and leadership than any of his colleagues, dismissed Callaghan as a ‘tail-end Charlie’, a quote that tormented Gordon Brown as he agonized over how to win an election in his own right after Blair’s long reign. Callaghan ruled only from April 1976 until the election that was forced on him in May 1979. This election campaign triggered the Thatcher revolution that made Callaghan seem like ancient history very speedily.

  The end of Callaghan’s reign was also traumatic and bleak, arguably bleaker than the fall of any other prime minister in the modern era, including even that of Theresa May. The darkness took many forms. Like Brown, Callaghan clumsily mishandled the timing of the election. He had dropped a few hints that he might call an election in the autumn of 1978, when some polls suggested that Labour had a chance of winning, or at least being the largest party in a hung parliament. David Steel was by no means alone in advising Callaghan to call the election. His deputy, Michael Foot, urged him to go to the country earlier. Healey, too, was of the same opinion. So were senior trade-union leaders. In July 1978 Callaghan was interviewed on peak-time TV by a panel of journalists. He was asked about the possibility of an early election and replied truthfully that he would have a summer holiday and decide after that. His words merely fuelled speculation, as he had not ruled out the idea. Like Gordon Brown, he was too transparently keeping all options open.21

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  Helmut Schmidt and British-German Relations

  A European Misunderstanding

  • Mathias Haeussler(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  3 James Callaghan, 1976–1979 On 10 January 1979, a sun-tanned and visibly relaxed Prime Minister James Callaghan addressed the assembled press at London Heathrow airport after his return from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, where he had just spent two days discussing nuclear and security politics with US President Jimmy Carter, French President Giscard d’Estaing, and Helmut Schmidt. At home, however, the situation was dire. Having failed to renew Labour’s social contract with the trade unions a few months earlier, Callaghan’s government was faced with widespread industrial action, the lorry drivers’ strike that had started the week before now severely threatening the distribution of petrol and other essential supplies in Britain. When asked about his ‘view of the mounting chaos in the country’, however, Callaghan bluntly brushed off the interviewer’s question. ‘Well, that’s a judgment that you are making and I promise you that, if you look at it from outside – and perhaps you’re taking a rather parochial view at the moment – I don’t think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos.’ ‘Now,’ he grumbled, ‘don’t you think that’s sufficient, after a 9 hour flight overnight . . . and no breakfast?’ 1 Next day, the Sun dashed out its famous headline ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’, fostering the image of a prime minister lacking grip and being out of touch with the British public. 2 It is now widely seen to have sealed the fate of his premiership. 3 1 TNA/PREM16/2050, Interview with the PM at Heathrow Airport after talks in Guadeloupe and Barbados, 10 January 1979. 2 Sun, 11 January 1979. 3 This, at least, is the conventional interpretation. See N. Ferguson, ‘Introduction: Crisis, What Crisis? The 1970s and the Shock of the Global’, in Ferguson et al., Shock of the Global, 1–24. For recent popular narratives along these lines, D. Sandbrook, Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974–1979 (London: Penguin, 2013); A.

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  Labour orators from Bevan to Miliband

  • Andrew S. Crines, Richard Hayton, Andrew S. Crines, Richard Hayton(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Manchester University Press

    (Publisher)

  public meetings and the mass media. As was the case with other Labour figures in the volume, Callaghan’s notable oratory occurred largely outside the parliamentary arena, to wider Labour movement and conference audiences and through public appearances and the national media. As Labour leader and prime minister, he contributed to party and national debates on developments and future direction of economic and education policy and although it has arguably declined as the key forum of political communication, also contributed several noteworthy parliamentary interventions across a range of core themes of domestic and international policy. Largely departing from the predominantly logos and/or pathos led rhetorical traditions of leaders of the Gaitskellite revisionist right and ‘hard’ left, there was more of a sense of collegial and negotiated ethos to Callaghan’s oratory.

  Callaghan occupied a relatively fluid and non-ideological location of ‘pragmatic labourism’ at the juncture of Labour’s centre and traditional right and, as such, was unencumbered by ‘hard’ association with any political grouping or ideological affiliation (

  Heppell et al. , 2010

  : 69; Meredith, 2008 : 114–15; Morgan, 1997a : 384–5;

  Plant et al. , 2004

  : 1–3, 120–4). As party leader, he was unsympathetic to minority groups and unwilling to endorse even factions of the centre-right leadership-loyalist variety, such as the Manifesto Group (Callaghan, 1980 ; The Times , 1976). He was also intent to retain a wider platform of support in the party, to appeal to the ‘soft centre’ as well as the party right (Manifesto Group, 1979 ; Morgan, 1997b ).

  While it may have appeared to Labour’s more impassioned, ideologically-grounded orators that his rhetoric lacked some of their rousing emotional intensity, Callaghan’s lack of a distinctive ideological position allowed him to appeal to a wider party platform than for instance colleagues of the ‘new’ or post-revisionist Labour right, such as Roy Jenkins, with clear benefits for his pragmatic and ‘incremental social democratic’ approach (Williams, 2002 ). There was a sense in which he ‘always positioned himself in such a way that he could strike out in a number of different directions’ politically and rhetorically, which delivered ‘some rather unexpected alliances notably when in the period of opposition when he does … tactically appear to move to the left both on trade union matters and on Europe in 1971–2’ (Callaghan, 1971 ; Morgan, 1997a : 383–4; 1997b ). In the corrosive atmosphere of Labour politics of the early 1970s, Callaghan’s more collegial, less polarising and alliance-shaping style and language were less divisive than those such as Jenkins. His successful challenge for the party leadership in 1976, in a contest crowded with candidates of the centre-right, is testament to his ability to cast his net beyond the parameters of the party’s defined ideological groupings to elicit support from a wider cross-section of the party (

  Heppell et al. , 2010

  ). In his appeal to centrist left and right opinion and twin focus on loyalty and party unity and moderation and ‘common sense’, he adopted an approach that proved successful and popular with those apprehensive of the divisive tendencies of factional figureheads of left and right (Callaghan, 1976d ; Radice, 2002 ). In 1976 he was successfully able to garner support from the ‘labourist’ centre, centre and social democratic right and centre-left of Labour’s ideological spectrum (

  Heppell et al.

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  From Bevan to Blair

  Fifty Years Reporting From the Political Front Line

  • Geoffrey Goodman(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Pluto Press

    (Publisher)

  Callaghan, like Wilson, understood the idiosyncrasies of the Labour movement and could handle its irrationalities far better than a Jenkins or a Healey. When he took over he had just passed his 64th birthday – exactly four years older than Wilson – but there was little outward sign of the ageing process. He was still quick to identify friends and foes; he possessed a swift reactive instinct in tackling difficult decisions. He could be moody, ill-tempered, gloomy and even pessimistic but was adept at being able to mask it all behind a savoir-faire earnestness. Healey – a particularly strong authority on the subject – regarded Callaghan as ‘the best of Britain’s post-war Prime Ministers after Attlee’ (1989: 447–8). No doubt an exaggeration, but Healey subscribes to the view that Callaghan was a changed man from the Jim Callaghan he had known and worked with in earlier years. There is a lot of truth in this, as I have reason to recall. After the 1970 General Election with Heath in No. 10 Callaghan actually considered leaving politics. He had a major operation (for prostate) and took a long time to recover. His confidence was sapped, as was his physical strength and energy. Around the time of his convales-cence we met for a long talk, and he chose the moment to confess his dismay with the political scene in general. He spoke of its relentless grind, the never-ending pursuit of power and ambition common to all politicians hovering around the middle and upper reaches of the greasy pole. His conversation went like this: ‘What is it all for?’ He sat slumped in an armchair in the lounge of a London hotel where we met. ‘Is it really worth all the travail, the anguish, the sheer nastiness?’ He answered his own questions: ‘I’m beginning to think it isn’t.’ Of course, these were rhetorical questions in a dialogue he, clearly, was having with himself. I happened to be present as he voiced them aloud. It might have been anyone else, given his mood of gloomy introspection.

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  How Labour Governments Fall

  From Ramsay Macdonald to Gordon Brown

  • T. Heppell, K. Theakston, T. Heppell, K. Theakston(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  In terms of personalities, Callaghan had put his imprint not only on Labour’s election manifesto, but also on the election campaign itself. As a highly skilled politician who had held all four major offices of state, Callaghan had led the inexperienced Mrs Thatcher in the personal approval ratings ever since becoming prime minister in April 1976. The avuncular and patriotic ‘Sunny Jim’ proved Labour’s ace in his party’s election pack. But in 1979 it was not sufficient to win the election, in which issues counted more than personalities. Memories of the 1976 IMF crisis, and an apparently bankrupt Labour government forced to apply for the biggest financial bail-out ever, may have receded. In retrospect, Callaghan had skilfully kept his Cabinet together without any resignations. However, the prime minister with his finger normally on the political pulse had lost his sure touch on fatal occasions in the final months of his premiership. The general election had been deferred in the autumn of 1978 when, arguably, it was Labour’s best chance to be returned to office. Callaghan’s clear-cut pay policy to reduce the scourge of unprecedented inflation won union co-operation for a while. But the history of post-war incomes policies in Britain demonstrated they were short-lived. During the Callaghan government the inflexible 5 per cent pay limit was dogmatically upheld and led directly to the industrial turmoil of the ‘Winter of Discontent’. The prime minister’s nonchalant performance at the Heathrow press conference on returning from Guadeloupe in January 1979 was disastrous for a politician with matchless experience of handling the media. In the end the stress and fatigue of minority government became apparent in his crucial indecision on 28 March, when Labour could and should have won the vital vote of confidence.

  During the final week MORI reported a 3 per cent Tory lead. Bob Worcester declared he was a ‘boomerang-backlash-bandwagon’ man. He claimed the public would ‘boomerang’ against the possibility of an 80–100 seat Tory majority; would ‘backlash’ against a possible Labour win after all, and finally reverse in the final days of the campaign. ‘In the event, I think that’s exactly what happened’, the MORI chief reported. On polling day, the vast majority of the polls had the result almost correct. MORI’s final two polls were within 1 per cent of the share of the vote of all three parties. MORI’s last poll, published in the London Evening Standard, predicted the outcome of the 1979 election in terms of the share of the votes cast almost precisely: Conservatives 45 per cent; Labour 37 per cent (Market & Opinion Research International, British Public Opinion: General Election 1979. Final Report

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  Ramsay Macdonald

  • Kevin Morgan(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Haus Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Behind such essentially contingent factors, there is also a striking symmetry between the two periods of government. If on the one hand Callaghan’s expediencies marked the exhaustion of the reforming dynamic of the Attlee years, MacDonald’s Labour governments represented the attainment of office before the party really knew what to do with it. For each of the leaders, the result was a sort of nemesis. However, where Callaghan fell with his party in the open contest of a general election, MacDonald abandoned his to form a new administration with his erstwhile political adversaries. Here the only real parallel is with his Liberal rival, Lloyd George, who in 1918 achieved a similar parliamentary landslide but also at the head of a largely Conservative administration. It is not a comparison that flatters MacDonald. For whereas Lloyd George remained very much in control of his government, making deft and sometimes unscrupulous use of his prime-ministerial prerogatives, MacDonald was little more than the creature of his own parliamentary majority. Critics alleged that he was merely a cipher, and this was only underlined by the seamless succession of the Conservative Baldwin a few months before the 1935 election. Rambling, sometimes incoherent, MacDonald even then remained in the Cabinet as a minister without portfolio, leaving the final verdict to his Seaham constituents. They rejected him by a majority of more than two to one.

  It is little wonder that such a career has become more than usually encrusted with myth. One MacDonald myth was that his actions of the summer of 1931 represented a cynical and calculated betrayal of his own party. Another was that they reflected a lonely sense of duty and commitment to the national interest, accepted almost in spite of himself. Neither of these myths is any longer tenable. Whether it demonstrates the integrity of his decision to form the National Government, or his limitations as a Labour leader in the years that preceded it, there is now general agreement that MacDonald’s career both before and after the crisis was marked by a far greater degree of consistency than most contemporaries suspected. A third MacDonald myth has therefore to be guarded against: that of reconstructing his political career as if the denouement of 1931 was what it always had to lead to.

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