History of England 1-6

Lawson and Major had both accepted that sterling must be ‘pegged’ to the Deutschmark; only later did their folly become apparent. Beneath the rhetoric of mockery and outraged patriotism, the Eurosceptics were jubilant, dubbing Black Wednesday ‘White Wednesday’. Their stance had been vindicated, and by their own opponents in Europe. For amidst all the blasts and counterblasts, the quiet words of Schlesinger to Waigel were heeded. ‘In 1948,’ he said, ‘remember, we had nothing, and look at what we have now. We achieved it by pursuing our own line of policy. We mustn’t weaken now.’ Thatcher herself broke her long silence to voice her agreement. ‘I do not blame the Germans,’ she said on 8 October. ‘They have managed the new currency in exactly the way we should have managed ours. They put their country first.’ And so, despite the avowals of friendship and the appeals to solidarity, the most ardently Europhile nation on the Continent had shown that if needs be it would advance its own interests over those of the European Union. So be it, mused the Eurosceptics. Perhaps the example should be followed.

58

One’s bum year

‘There’s no such thing as Majorism,’ said Thatcher dismissively in an interview, but the jibe was unjust. Major was not a revolutionary, but the time did not require such a figure. After the withdrawal from the ERM, a ‘disaster’ from which the economy itself recovered with ease, it was felt that the Conservative party needed some peptone in its blood, which Major provided. On 8 October 1993, he gave a speech at the Conservative conference in Blackpool that came as close as any to encapsulating his view of the world.

The old values – neighbourliness, decency, courtesy – they’re still alive, they’re still the best of Britain. They haven’t changed, and yet somehow people feel embarrassed by them … It is time to return to those old core values, time to get back to basics, to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting responsibility for yourself and your family and not shuffling off on other people and the state.

As such, it should have been unexceptionable, but Major did not foresee the reaction of the press.

It is imprudent in any government to pose as moral guardian, but the danger here was greater yet. The ‘Back to Basics’ speech was quickly construed as an appeal to some potent but hazy notion of Victorian sexual probity, despite Major’s own denials. It was unfortunate that the country in 1993 was falling prey to what Macaulay termed ‘one of its periodic fits of morality’. In this instance, the supposed fecklessness of single mothers was the object. The more right-wing members of the government openly fanned this resentment, evoking the Victorian distinction between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. The party that proclaimed itself a tower of rectitude was ripe for shaking.

The News of the World began the frenzy. David Mellor, a close ally of the prime minister, was discovered to be having an affair with an actress called Antonia de Sancha. Piers Morgan, then editor of the News of the World, remarked that ‘probably every Tory MP is up to some sort of sexual shenanigans’. And so it proved. In January 1994, scarcely a day passed without a Tory MP being unmasked. One vocal supporter of the ‘Back to Basics’ campaign, Tim Yeo, was found to have fathered a child outside his marriage; it was, to use the period’s most popular euphemism, a particularly egregious ‘error of judgement’. But not all the peccadilloes were sexual in their nature. Indeed, it was the fact that so many of the scandals lay in banal cases of financial impropriety that alerted Major to a disquieting truth: the press had turned against him. The Daily Telegraph, once the Tories’ sturdiest ally, was no more sympathetic to Mellor than it had been to Lamont. ‘It is not the business of the press to protect Mr Mellor’s family,’ a leader tartly observed. ‘It is Mr Mellor’s.’

1993 had been an unhappy year in every respect. The miners had successfully challenged another set of deep pit closures, but the closures went ahead anyway. The government’s probity was once more in question. That the pits closed had been the ones worked by the very miners whom Thatcher had praised during the strike of 1984 only added to the gall. Thatcher herself claimed that she would never have permitted such a betrayal.