Dale On This Day in Politics

Britain's Political History in 365 Days
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ISBN: 978-1-83895-476-5
Verlag: Atlantic Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 400 Seiten

Who became Britain's first Prime Minister on 3 April 1721? When was Karl Marx born? Where and when was the first battle of the Wars of the Roses? When did Big Ben first bong? When did the first British woman cast her vote? (Clue: It wasn't 1918.) Find the answers to these questions and many more in this landmark political history. From the first meeting of an elected English parliament on 20 January 1265 to the tabling of the Bill of Rights on 13 February 1689; from the Peterloo massacre of 16 August 1819 to Britain voting to leave the EU on 23 June 2016, there is a growing thirst for knowledge about the history of our constitutional settlement, our party system and how our parliamentary democracy has developed. Writing as an observer of political history, but also as someone with an opinion, acclaimed political broadcaster Iain Dale charts the main events of the last few hundred years, with one event per page, per day. 'The indefatigable Iain Dale always cuts to the nub of politics.' Adam Boulton

Iain Dale is an accomplished broadcaster, presenting his own daily radio show on LBC, and several podcasts, including For the Many and Iain Dale All Talk. He is a regular on Question Time, Newsnight, Good Morning Britain, Politics Live and a columnist for the Telegraph. He is the author/editor of more than 40 books, most recently The Presidents and The Prime Ministers. He lives in Tunbridge Wells and Norfolk. He can be found @iaindale on social media.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dale, Iain

Leseproben

FEBRUARY

Tuesday, 1 February 1910

THE FIRST LABOUR EXCHANGE OPENS

The Liberal government led by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and then Herbert Henry Asquith was one of the great reforming governments of all time. It set the framework for the welfare state, which would develop over the rest of the century.

As part of these innovative reforms, dreamed up largely by Campbell-Bannerman, but implemented and paid for by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, the Labour Exchanges Bill was introduced into the House of Commons in May 1909 by the President of the Board of Trade, Winston Churchill, following the so-called People’s Budget on 29 April. It received its Royal Assent on 20 September.

Only five months later, the first state-organized labour exchanges in the UK opened their doors, and by the end of February 1910 there were eighty-three across the country. The declared that interest and demand was huge and there was a ‘promising start everywhere’.

Labour exchanges were not a particularly new innovation in that there had been private sector or charitable exchanges for some decades. The first was opened by social reformer and employment rights advocate Alsager Hay Hill in London in 1871.

The overriding purpose of the Labour Exchanges Act was to enable the unemployed to find work more easily, as well as to improve the mobility of workers. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the creation of labour exchanges was opposed by the nascent trade union movement. The unions thought their bargaining power might be impacted, making it easier for employers to recruit cheap labour from other parts of the country. Employers weren’t too keen either, at least initially, which meant that not all positions were advertised. My own grandfather moved from a farming background in Ayrshire to the Consett steelworks as a result of the local labour exchange advertising a position.

Initially, the exchanges didn’t fulfil their promise and only around a quarter of the people registered with them managed to find a job through their services. However, by 1913, three thousand people each day were being placed into jobs through more than 430 labour exchanges.

Wednesday, 2 February 1972

BRITISH EMBASSY IN DUBLIN BURNED TO THE GROUND

On the same day that eleven of the victims of the Bloody Sunday shootings in Londonderry were being buried, protesters in Dublin burned the British Embassy to the ground. For three days more than twenty thousand people had been protesting outside the embassy in Merrion Square, not far from the Dáil.

Hundreds of petrol bombs were thrown, as well as stones and random missiles. Fire engines were prevented from getting to the scene for several hours and the crowds cut their hoses. According to the :

All windows in the front of the building were smashed, and shutters torn from their hinges. Burning Union Jacks were hung on the front of the building above symbolic coffins, placed on the embassy steps by march leaders who were allowed through the police cordon around the building… watching crowds cheered as the interior of the embassy blazed fiercely. ‘Burn, burn, burn,’ they shouted as chunks of masonry and woodwork fell blazing on to the street. They redoubled their cheering whenever they saw the fire breaking through into new parts of the building. They stopped fire engines from getting through, and hurled petrol bombs at the building to speed the blaze.

Around twenty demonstrators and police were injured. One police officer was seriously injured when a gelignite bomb was used to blow out the front door.

All diplomats and staff had been evacuated from the building, although the Ambassador, John Peck, was in London and returned immediately.

As the embassy burned, some of the crowd moved to the nearby British Passport Office, where they were baton-charged by the police. Thirty people were injured.

Other British related organizations and buildings in and around Dublin also came under attack. Effigies of Prime Minister Edward Heath were burned. The UK government made a formal diplomatic protest over the burning down of the embassy. The Irish government responded by expressing ‘regret’ and said it would pay compensation.

The embassy was rebuilt in Merrion Road, a short distance away from its original site, and in 2015 it was converted into apartments.

Wednesday, 3 February 1960

MACMILLAN MAKES ‘WIND OF CHANGE’ SPEECH IN SOUTH AFRICA

Only forty years earlier, the British Empire covered a fifth of the globe. But instead of the empire making Britain more prosperous, it had started to prove a drag. Clement Attlee’s Labour government had started the process of decolonization, with India in 1947 being the prime example to others. The Conservative governments of the 1950s continued the policy albeit with rather less enthusiasm.

At the beginning of 1960, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan embarked on a month-long tour of African countries, which culminated in a speech to the South African parliament on 3 February. The speech had two aims. Firstly, he wanted to make clear that Britain would not stand in the way of any British colony which wanted to gain independence. South Africa had achieved that status in 1934, but there were a whole host of African nations queuing up to unshackle themselves from British rule. The line from the speech which everyone now remembers was a direct signal that any reluctance from Britain to scupper independence movements was disappearing. ‘The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.’

Barbados, Botswana, Cameroon, Cyprus, Gambia, Guyana, Jamaica, Kenya, Kuwait, Lesotho, Malawi, Malta, Mauritius, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Swaziland, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Yemen and Zambia all became independent nations in the 1960s.

The second aim of the speech was to warn South Africa that its policy of apartheid was unacceptable to the international community: ‘I hope you won’t mind my saying frankly that there are some aspects of your policies which make it impossible for us to do this without being false to our own deep convictions about the political destinies of free men to which in our own territories we are trying to give effect.’

The speech was received in total silence.

Ironically, Macmillan had given an almost identical address in Ghana, but the press missed its significance.

Sunday, 4 February 1945

CHURCHILL MEETS ROOSEVELT AND STALIN AT YALTA

By the beginning of February 1945, it wasn’t a question of ‘if’ Germany would be defeated but when. France had been liberated, and so had Belgium. The Soviet Army was forty miles from Berlin.

With the three main Allied leaders having already met in Tehran in November 1943, it was decided that they would meet again at Yalta, in Crimea, in early February 1945. The aim of the conference was to decide the map of Europe after the defeat of Germany. Churchill and Stalin had already pre-empted this discussion by talking about ‘spheres of influence’ at a meeting in Moscow in November 1944, a discussion from which Stalin took much more meaning than the British Prime Minister. The French leader, General de Gaulle, was not invited to Yalta after objections from both Roosevelt and Stalin, a slight he was never to forget.

Despite the meeting being held in the Soviet Union, Roosevelt took on the role of host. America’s main aim was to persuade the Soviets to join the war in the Pacific against the Japanese. Britain wanted to ensure free and fair elections and democratic government in Central and Eastern Europe, while Stalin wished to establish, as part of his war security strategy, a zone of influence in the countries on his western borders. The final agreement was given the name: The Declaration of Liberated Europe.

It was agreed that, following the unconditional surrender of Germany, the country, and its capital city, Berlin, would be divided into four occupation zones, which the USA, Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France would administer. Germany would undergo demilitarization and ‘denazification’. The borders of Poland would be redrawn and Stalin promised not to interfere in its internal affairs. Poland would lose territory in the east to the Soviet Union and gain territory in the west from Germany. The Soviet Union would join the United Nations. Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany. Trials were to be held to hold Nazi leaders to account, and a Committee on German Dismemberment was to be set up.

Churchill and Roosevelt soon realized that the promises made by Stalin over Poland were worth nothing.

Tuesday, 5 February 2013

COMMONS VOTES FOR SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

Believe it or not, Michael Heseltine is in part to be credited with the introduction of equal marriage. A few days after the Coalition was formed in 2010, he gave a talk to incoming junior ministers. He told them to think of one thing they wanted to achieve while in their job. Lib Dem Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone mulled this on the way back to her office in her ministerial car and determined to persuade her colleagues to introduce equal marriage for gay and lesbian people. It hadn’t been a promise in the Conservative manifesto, but she knew the Prime Minister, David Cameron, would be sympathetic given what he said in his conference speech as Tory leader in 2006. He said marriage ‘means something whether...