Just Finished Reading: That Option No Longer Exists – Britain 1974-76 by John Medhurst (FP: 2014) [155pp] 

For those who lived through them, the 1970’s were memorably turbulent times in the UK. Not only were we in the midst of an IRA bombing campaign, but the ongoing oil crisis was helping to push inflation ever higher peaking at an AMAZING and quite eye-watering 26.87% in August of 1975. The year 1974 was also when we had a rare double election – both won by Harold Wilson’s Labour Party – the first such event since 1910 and the last to date (so far). During this era Britain was also wracked by strikes and I vividly remember doing homework (I was in my early/mid-teens at the time) by candlelight because of rolling blackouts caused by power station failures due to lack of coal. Although I didn’t appreciate it at the time – being both young and uninformed/stupid - I think that my parents were quite worried about the whole thing.  

Despite Wilson’s government (something I SO need to read up about further) being at least technically Labour – and MUCH further to the Left than more modern Labour governments – the author does go to town a bit on their lack of Socialist ‘chops’ and the lost opportunities to turn the country leftwards for decades to come (remember that Thatcher came to power in 1979 – in part because I voted for her). I can kind of understand this having seen far too often how timid Labour governments are even after been given a mandate to govern by gaining a LARGE majority. [Sidebar: It’ll be interesting to see how the next Labour government actually govern IF their majority is as high as predicted following the election on 4th July]. But, with things as they were the UK economy was in the process of being well and truly flushed down the toilet and needed a quick injection of cash to tide it over the bad bit. Going cap in hand to the IMF got the predicted response: You can have the money on the understanding that you ditch all of this ridiculous Socialist crap and go FULL austerity. Having little to no wriggle room the Labour government acquiesced, and any idea of Socialist Britain died with it. Simply that option no longer existed. 

Interestingly, especially after watching the 1988 TV adaptation of the book and (much) later reading ‘A Very British Coup’ by Chris Mullin, it transpired that the conspiracy to overthrow a hard Left Labour government wasn’t as far-fetched as you might think. There were actual high-level discussions with senior Civil Servants, businesspeople and ex-military about possible intervention if the Labour government went “too far” and the country needed a ‘course correction’. OBVIOUSLY, I’ll be reading further about THAT little detail. This was an interesting look into a turbulent political period from a distinctly left-wing (or “radical hard Left” for my American readers [lol]) viewpoint. Recommended.