Social Collapse - Goodbye, Great Britain
Years of affluence meant that Britain’s workers now demanded wages and living standards their forebears could never have imagined. Unfortunately, they weren’t quite so keen on the flexibility, innovation and productivity needed to pay for them. And in an age of cut-throat global competition, this spelled disaster for British industry and Social Collapse for Great Britain.
Even Prime Minister Jim Callaghan, the man who was investing so much public money in Leyland, had a taste of the consequences for British manufacturing.
Not long after Jim Callaghan had come to power, his office ordered a brand-new Rover with bullet-proof glass and bomb-proof armour-plating. On his very first outing, Callaghan pressed the button to activate the state-of-the-art electric windows and the glass fell in on his lap. At the end of the journey Callaghan handed the pane of glass to his driver and all he said was, “Don’t bring this car again.”
But Sunny Jim’s woes went far beyond poorly-made motors. From rising unemployment and rampant inflation, to wildly profligate spending and borrowing, his in-tray was overflowing.
By almost every economic measure, Britain was falling behind its rivals. One American commentator put it bluntly. “Goodbye, Great Britain. It was nice knowing you.”
Newsreader “Off-licences did a roaring trade this afternoon after the budget announcement, as people rushed to beat the increases.”
In April 1975, Chancellor Denis Healey delivered the toughest budget for years, ramping up the duties on booze in a desperate attempt to balance the books.
Survivors
Back at home, families tuning in to watch a new BBC drama found little comfort. In ‘Survivors’, 95% of the population has been wiped out by a future pandemic - The Death. ‘Survivors’ captured the pessimism and paranoia of mid-70s Britain. A nation stalked by calamity, where power was up for grabs. Tellingly, the villain was a former trade unionist. And the union man’s charm was just a front for his dictatorial ambition. On the surface, ‘Survivors’ was just an escapist fantasy, it’s villain an exaggerated caricature of what was wrong with Britain. But for many viewers, the threat of a militant union leader seizing power in the left-wing coup was all too real.
News reporter “East Lambrook Farm, Somerset. When the red menace comes, when Britain teeters on the brink of social collapse, down on the farm there’ll be men ready to rally to the call of a nation in distress.”
Civil Assistance
62-year-old General Sir Walter Walker was horrified that a once great Britain seemed to be in terminal decline. “Does this country want the Communists to run it or not? I do not call the Labour government a Labour government. I call it a trade union government and I’ve been studying the enemy within. These people defy Parliament and they defy the rules of law.”
Walter Walker received thousands of letters, many from ex-military men, keen to join his anti-insurgency group Civil Assistance.
In the event of a crippling general strike, Civil Assistance planned to seize control of essential public services - power stations, Heathrow Airport, even the BBC. Although precisely how Walker and his men would actually do this remains a mystery.
In February 1975, Sir Walter Walker summoned his loyal followers for a crisis meeting. They gathered in secret at St Lawrence Jewry church in the heart of the City of London. General Walker told his audience that whether they liked it or not, civil war was coming. “Which side are you on?” He asked them. “The side of decent loyal Britishers or the troublemakers and traitors?”
Walker always denied that Civil Assistance was a private army, but of course that’s exactly what it looked like.
Today it’s easy to dismiss Walter Walker as a figure of fun, a paranoid right-wing eccentric. But in his own rather peculiar way he was reflecting something that many people felt.
The BBC commissioned a national opinion poll to see if ordinary people shared Walker’s fears of a totalitarian take-over and social collapse. Almost, incredibly, two out of three did think there was a genuine threat to democracy.
External Links
Social Collapse - Wikipedia Page
