“State of Emergency: Britain, 1970-1974”, by Dominic Sandbrook

 

Penguin Books, 768 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0141032153

If I were forced to come up with a term to describe the of the UK during the early 1970s, it would be “conflicted attitudes” – which in what Dominic Sandbrook did in State of Emergency: Britain, 1970-1974, the third book in his series on modern Great Britain (the first two being Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles, reviewed on February 11^th, 2020, and White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties, reviewed on February 18^th, 2020). The focus of State of Emergency centers around the premiership of Edward Heath from his surprising victory in June of 1970 to his just as surprising defeat in March of 1974. As to why these two mystifying events occurred, Sandbrook’s conclusion is that, while the British public were, by and large, sympathetic towards his goals, in the end they decided to postpone any further conflict these might create after enduring so much of that during Heath’s time at No. 10: the Oil Shock, the Three-Day Week and strike after strike after strike from the all-powerful Trade Unions that ultimately drove Heath and the Conservatives from power.

This is, in hindsight, rather peculiar, seeing as the Heath government was far more liberal and sympathetic towards the Unions particularly and the lower classes in general than it gets credit for, and actually understood workers’ wishes better than many of the workers’ compatriots did or wished to. Heath and his ministers started with some standard Conservative measures designed to “reward merit” and “not support lame ducks” and so on and so forth, but ended up throwing untold fortunes to ducks both lame and otherwise, not to mention some fouler fowls out of sheer expediency that Harold Wilson would have stopped short of (if Edward Heath ad been an American President he would have been your stereotypical RINO: Republican In Name Only). Thus, the government’s attitudes were conflicted in one sense, the general public’s in another, what with this supposedly Conservative government’s proper concern with inflation warring with its desire to be all things to all people, and so Heath’s government got the worst of every world and no credit from anyone.

Most of the reasons for the ultimate fall of Heath’s government is because his popular support was a mile wide but an inch deep, and that the best thing that he had going for him was that he Wasn’t Wilson (Harold, that is; Heath’s abysmal communicative skills didn’t help, either). Which is strange, considering that for the first time “many people had cars…central heating…indoor toilets…gleaming new kitchens” and so on; the examples of material comfort and advancement were many, as were so any other changes, from the rise of inflation and glam rock, the decline of deference and cinema audiences, to the dark arts of the period’s football and industrial relations. The formidably useless Heath government found itself declaring no fewer than five – FIVE! – States of Emergency during its mere 44 months of power, while also presiding over a wrecked economy, a loss of prestige worldwide and bomb attacks by the Provisional IRA; it also had to suffer the indignities of flared trousers, insane haircuts and beards, and the popularity of the color brown.

State of Emergency is more than a continuation of Sandbrook’s earlier books or a way station between future volumes (two more, so far); it is a meditation on the hubris of men and power, and how the best-laid schemes o’mice an’ men Gang aft agley.