History of England 1-6

Other problems remained. Northern Ireland dogged Major’s tenure, but now at last there seemed the possibility of a solution. John Major welcomed a statement by the IRA leadership that ‘there will be a complete cessation of military operations’ at midnight on 31 August 1994, but sought an assurance ‘that this is indeed intended to be a permanent renunciation of violence, that is to say, for good’. The UK government had repeatedly declared that three months free from violence was necessary to confirm any IRA commitment. This the IRA proved incapable of delivering. Indeed, the surreal alternation between the IRA’s earnest public pronouncements and its continuing campaign of violence led many to wonder whether the government’s approach held much promise of success. On 19 September, Major said that the IRA was ‘very close’ to providing assurances that its currently open-ended ceasefire would be permanent. On a visit to the United States, however, Gerry Adams appeared to undercut such optimism by saying that ‘none of us can say two or three years up the road that if the causes of conflict aren’t resolved, that another IRA leadership won’t come along’. That the two sides differed materially on the question of ‘causes’ was for the time being an insoluble conundrum.

In September, the prime minister gave a speech calling for a ‘real national effort to build an “anti-yob” culture’. This was criticized in the press as an attempt to counter Tony Blair’s declaration that he would be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’, but such criticisms missed the mark. The ‘anti-yob’ culture was entirely of a piece with Major’s world view. He understood the temptations that poverty presents, but refused to accept that they could not be resisted.

Protests grew over the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill. It was a fitting response to a bill which restricted the right of public protest, but it had no effect. Tony Blair was a notable signatory to the bill. The Big Issue, a magazine set up by homeless people to address homelessness, asked Blair to explain his decision. In a smog of recrimination and impasse, one small symbolic gesture shone out. The queen visited Russia, the first of her family to do so since 1917, but the Duke of Edinburgh, in a rare denial of duty, refused. As far as he was concerned, the heirs of the Bolsheviks were the heirs of those who had ‘murdered my family’.

Concerns about what had become known as ‘the environment’ came to a head in this decade. The ‘greenhouse effect’ and anthropogenic global warming had both been identified in the late Eighties, but only in the Nineties did they begin to affect policy. A Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution was established, with the aim of reducing pollution caused by motor vehicles.

In November, John Major announced that ‘preliminary talks’ with Loyalists and Sinn Féin could begin, in the light of the former’s ceasefire. But the discussions continued in tandem with further incidents. Feilim O’Hadhmaill, a lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, was sentenced to twentyfive years’ imprisonment for having plotted an IRA bombing campaign on the UK mainland. It was a winter of problems. In December, the government was forced to back down on a proposed VAT rise after losing a parliamentary vote; the chancellor proposed increased duty on alcohol, tobacco, petrol and diesel instead.

In the meantime, the Conservatives lost the Dudley West constituency – the haemorrhage of by-elections had begun. The Common Fisheries Policy had long been one of the more contentious terms of British membership of the EU, and in January 1995, it sparked a debate in the House of Commons. Why, it was asked, did countries with no historical claim on the North Sea have rights in it? It was a running sore, but the vote was carried. The prison population had risen from 40,000 to 50,000 under the tenure of Michael Howard. A breakout was attempted at Whitemoor Prison, with five IRA members involved. Into this and related matters, the European Commission of Human Rights issued a ruling that, if upheld by the European Court of Human Rights, would remove from the home secretary the power to determine the length of time that juveniles convicted of murder should remain in prison.

Meanwhile, Europe and its discontents rumbled on. Major declared that ‘the UK should refuse to participate in a single European currency in 1996 or 1997 but might participate in 1999, subject to fresh, more stringent conditions than those already set out in the Maastricht Treaty’. On 16 February, he asserted: ‘we shall retain our border controls’. A joint framework document for Northern Ireland was at last agreed but promptly leaked. The joint framework agreement included the removal of the Republic’s claim on the six counties, but mooted a ‘north-south body’. It was to be yet another near-win for a government that was not so much ill-managed as ill-starred.

60

The moral abyss