663. Britain in the 70s: The Brexit That Never Was (Part 2)

21:52Dominic Sandbrook:Well, I'll quote Henry Kissinger. We have an Oval Office transcript from January 1975. Henry Kissinger is talking to Gerald Ford, President Ford. He says, Britain is a tragedy. It has sunk to begging, borrowing, stealing until North Sea oil comes in. That Britain has become such a scrounger is a disgrace. I feel that's sad. I like Britain and I don't like to see it being slagged off in the Oval Office. Wall Street Journal, three months later, Britain is sinking, it says. Labour are heading for a policy of total confiscation, so anybody with any money should get it out of the country. Goodbye, Great Britain.

22:29Dominic Sandbrook:It was nice knowing you. And actually, we haven't even mentioned Northern Ireland. I mean, this is now a frozen conflict. We'll talk about this a tiny bit more next week. The province has now been governed from Westminster, but hundreds of people are dying every year. again terrible publicity for britain especially in america so would you say things are worse then

22:48Tom Holland:than they are now oh yeah unquestionably worse then so this is cheering people up actually i

22:53Dominic Sandbrook:i like to cheer people up we don't have hundreds of people dying in terrorist attacks and the economy is not as bad the economy is utterly moribund but what's inflation now three percent or something what was inflation then 25 mind you we are recording this uh in the middle of the iran

23:09Tom Holland:war so god knows what will have happened by the time this goes out yeah but the difference is

23:12Dominic Sandbrook:that's an external shock i mean external shock is always bad for you whereas this at this point has become endemic everybody else is basically recovering from the after effects of the 1973 or crisis britain is just plunging deeper and deeper into the into the morass i suppose also kirstama is not behaving quite as ludicrously as harold wilson surely i mean i would almost be heartened if he were because he's so boring so talking of harold wilson we come to the spring of 1975 his advisors are desperately begging him to take action against inflation but he doesn't do anything about it because basically he's got this tiny majority he doesn't want to offend the left and the amazing thing about this is the trade union leaders themselves now are saying this has got to change so some of the trade union leaders go to the head of the trade union congress len murray and they say and i quote we can't go on like this you know i have to keep asking for a better deal for my members however at some point the government needs to say no ideally they won't say no to me but they shouldn't say no to some of my fellow leaders and they should you know we should sort something out this is madness and then on top of all this there is a further twist and this takes us back to basil and the germans because this twist is europe for two years britain has been a member of the european community and now wilson wants to give people the chance to come out a Brexit referendum.

24:35Dominic Sandbrook:And to explain why he's doing this, we have to go back to something we've actually never talked about in the rest of his history. So we've done however many hundred episodes, but we've never done Britain and Europe. I think because there's a general sense, isn't there, Tom? You might disagree with me about this, but I don't think you will. That the subject of Britain and the European community is unbelievably boring. It's quite boring, yes. Do you not think people think that? See, I think, which is one thing, an underappreciated element of Brexit, that if you live in Luxembourg and you think about the European Union, your heart sings.

25:05Dominic Sandbrook:There's a spring in your step. You think of a new age of peace. Whereas in Britain, someone mentions to you the EU and you think of regulations about the size of sausages. You do. Yeah, absolutely.

25:17Tom Holland:Checks on lamb, that kind of thing. Exactly. Just intrinsically dull, unless you're a lamb, of course.

25:22Dominic Sandbrook:Well, we will unpack this because let's talk about Britain and Europe. So if you go back to the origins of it, in 1957, six countries signed the Treaty of Rome to build the European Economic Community. And that was the first step in this project to build ever closer union. It's all about coal and steel, isn't it? It was coal and steel originally, the European Coal and Steel Community. But basically, it was a conveyor belt idea. We'll move slowly but steadily towards greater union. This will mean there'll never be another war in Europe. And we'll all be richer and we'll be happier and we'll be friends and it'll be great.

25:55Tom Holland:but seen from london it's it's something for losers isn't it because exactly it's either people who've been defeated by the allies or people who've been defeated by the germans or been

26:06Dominic Sandbrook:fascist this is what clement atley said when he was asked about it he said what do you think about and he said well very recently we had to we had to stop two of the six countries from basically killing everybody in the other in the other four why would we get involved with them and actually i don't think there's any scenario in which britain would have joined early on first of all Well, Britain has an empire in the 1950s, so that's what everybody's interested in. Politicians are much more interested in what's going on in Canada or Australia or the Middle East than they are in what's going on in Belgium, Luxembourg or Italy.

26:36Tom Holland:And this is what de Gaulle famously says, isn't it? That Britain's horizons are... Global.

26:42Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah.

26:43Tom Holland:And Atlantic.

26:44Dominic Sandbrook:She looks for the sea. Exactly. And lots of people think that in Britain themselves. I mean, lots of exporters think that they're selling goods to Australia or to Canada. They don't really want to sell goods to Luxembourg. On the left, the Labour Party and the trade unions generally at this point think of Europe as a capitalist Christian Democrat plot. These are all a load of kind of weird Italians with kind of thin glasses who are rigging elections to stop socialists winning. And they don't like socialism. Why on earth would we get into bed with these people? They're bad people. And what's worse, they're all Catholics.

27:20Dominic Sandbrook:And there's loads of people in the Labour Party and the trade unions who are kind of low church Protestants. And they're like, why would we get into bed with these people? They're the worst people. And then generally the public at large, for completely obvious cultural and historic reasons, just do not think of themselves as continental Europeans. In recent years, historians have written excellent books saying this is nonsense. Britain was always part of Europe. The war of the whatever succession, William of Orange, all of this kind of thing. That's all fine. but the public just don't want to know that at this point they just don't think you know you see so many quotes in sort of post-war Britain well we're not like them we're not like the French and the Germans we've always stood alone you know all that kind of thing and you can't persuade people by writing academic monographs well more deep-seated than that I mean people have lived

28:11Tom Holland:through two uh wars in which the continent was nothing but trouble I mean that would be one way you could frame it yeah I think that's exactly how people think they think we've fought two wars

28:21Dominic Sandbrook:against these people they're terrible people why would we get involved with them we don't want to have anything to do with it now by the early 60s elite opinion had begun to shift the empire had gone the suez crisis had happened which very much damaged the relationship with america and as we talked about last time the british economy is performing really badly compared with france or germany or italy or whatever and actually a lot of people at the top in westminster in the media grudgingly change their minds maybe it would be good to sell our products to the europeans after all so 1961 harold mcmillan tory prime minister applied to join and general de gaulle vetoed it in january 63 he said come on you're not europeans you're always going on about your commonwealth and the america and yeah the open sea all of that stuff i've had i'm sick of hearing about nelson you can't join and so they he rejects it so no pleurer my lord no pleurer he says to uh don't cry my lord he says to i mean that's it's very ungrateful from de gaulle given that we bailed him out i know but i kind of respect him for it though you know that's what the french do very well the knife in the back the chief british negotiator was a young a young turk a thrusting young Turk called Ted Heath.

29:39Dominic Sandbrook:And Ted Heath said, we in Britain are a part of Europe by geography, tradition, history, culture, and civilization.

29:46Tom Holland:I mean, he had been to the Nuremberg rallies, right? I mean, he'd seen what could go wrong in Europe. Do you not recall?

29:52Dominic Sandbrook:He had shaken hands with Himmler. Yeah. He was disappointed by Himmler's handshake. Yeah. And then he'd fought in the Second World War. And yeah, Heath is basically the one man in Britain or one of a very small group of people who are passionate europhiles. But most people aren't. In 1967, Harold Wilson, Labour, made another very tentative approach and de Gaulle rejected it again. No way, I'm not even going to contemplate it. Now, there are two telling things about these first bids. First of all, neither of them was very popular with the public. So when people are asked, they were either utterly indifferent or hostile.

30:29Dominic Sandbrook:And the second thing I think is really important and explains actually how you got to Brexit in 2016. Both of them were basically born out of weakness and desperation and not enthusiasm. British governments did not try to join Europe because they loved Europe. They were trying to join Europe basically because they'd run out of other options and this was the last card in the deck. And it's very grudging. It's a kind of getting into bed with Luxembourg feels like the last thing you want to do, but they have to do it. Anyway, Heath, who's the one person who really is passionate about it, finally gets Britain through the door.

31:00Dominic Sandbrook:And in January 73, Britain joins the European Economic Community, which at the time was known in Britain as the Common Market. The thing is that by this point, a lot of time has gone by. So the rules are already established.

31:13Tom Holland:And they've been established by governments that have, for instance, lots of farmers.

31:18Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah.

31:19Tom Holland:Who have their own take that aren't necessarily advantageous for British farmers.

31:23Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. So Britain had to swallow 13 ,000 pages of European enactments about farming and fishing and all these kinds of things. And this becomes this running saw. So basically, nobody in Britain likes having to swallow the rules. And they complain about it consistently for the next 50 years or whatever it is.

31:44Tom Holland:Dominic, am I right that because we invented cricket, we therefore follow the laws? Yeah. Whereas sneaky continental types don't.

31:54Dominic Sandbrook:Wow. Nigel Farage joins us on the show.

31:57Tom Holland:Great time on the show. I'm just asking. Is that, because that, that is, that has been a prevailing stereotype. That is the perception.

32:05Dominic Sandbrook:That is the perception. Okay. So a couple of observations on the politics of it. At this point, it is seen primarily as a conservative project. So it's Heath's project. There are some Tory rebels, about 40 of them, who are led by Enoch Powell, who think that Europe will undermine British sovereignty. But they are definitely a minority. Heath never admits that there's a trade-off between the benefits of joining the common market and the obvious downsides, which are that obviously it will affect British sovereignty because European laws will take precedence over British ones. And Dennis Healy, Labour Chancellor, who had been at university with Ted Heath, he said later, if Heath had been honest about it, he would not have got it through.

32:51Dominic Sandbrook:Heath did what he had to do, smart politics. He downplayed the democratic implications of European membership because he knew that the British people would have a massive hissy fit if they found out that European laws took precedence. And actually, that brings us to this question of the great British public. In some ways, you could say that British people in the 70s are more European than they've ever been. They go on holidays abroad, which they'd never done before in any great numbers. They're even little, tiny little things. So I always think a good indicator is wine drinking. People didn't drink wine at all, really.

33:30Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, about something like 59 % of people in the 1950s never drank wine in the course of a year. Because they're drinking beer. Because they're drinking beer. And it quadruples wine drinking in the 20 years between 1960 and 1980. And this is, of course, the quintessential sign of continental sophistication.

33:48Tom Holland:Isn't there another piece of evidence for British engagement with the continent that the Christmas specials of much loved sitcoms always involve the various characters going on an amusing holiday jaunt to the Costa del Plonca or something where hilarity ensues?

34:10Dominic Sandbrook:When you see Europe on TV in 1973, it's either the...

34:16Tom Holland:Building sites, donkeys, lecherous men, all of that.

34:21Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, it's either the salt of the earth Englishman getting into amusing scrapes in terrible Costa del Sol resorts. Or it's hard-faced Germans. Of course, yes. Punishing prisoners of war at Kalditz. or it's Dad's Army or it's the World at War, the documentary series which I think comes out in 1973. With Sir Laurence Olivier. Sir Laurence Olivier. There's a profound obsession, I think, with the Second World War in the 1970s for obvious reasons. I mean, it's very recent but also it's such a telling contrast with the state of the nation in the 70s. And I think as a result of all that, it's absolutely true that most people do not feel, they do not describe themselves as Europeans they are very hostile to the idea of european integration in 1970 when ted heath won the election only one in five people said they supported britain joining europe a year later 70 when he launched the application to join 70 said they were against it and i think this is a result of heath's excellent publicity blitz because he sends girls to beaches he sends girls to beaches dressed in tight t-shirts that say say yes to europe and they're handing out leaflets that say europe is fun more work and more play too you see people people complain that kirstama

35:41Tom Holland:isn't proactive but there is an example of how he could promote his policies well i actually think

35:47Dominic Sandbrook:kirstama and ted heath kirstama and teddy i think are very similar they have terrible voices they They are civil servants, basically, aren't they? They're technocrats. They're not brilliant communicators with the public.

36:01Tom Holland:Keir Starmer is more willing to go on about his disadvantaged background. My father was a toolmaker.

36:06Dominic Sandbrook:Ted Heath would never talk about it. So anyway, Ted Heath gets Britain into Europe in January 73. And are people delighted and do they care? Basically, no and no. So a survey for the Times found that 39 % of people said that it made them unhappy. 38 said happy and 23 couldn't decide and my favorite survey one of my favorite surveys ever done i think was done by the daily mirror and it said to people would you like to see these european these european customs in our country would you like to see more pavement cafes no one by 23 awful would you like to see more shops open on sundays no one by 35 would you ever like to have coffee in a roll for breakfast oh no what about 45 i mean is it you you genuinely wouldn't like to have coffee in a roll for breakfast tom i just think things were better then you know yeah this is the maddest one given that the british people's tastes would you like to see the pubs open all day as they are on in the continent no again one by 26 they don't really have pubs on the continent though do they that's the problem it's bars it's all bars yeah i think if you had said to people pavement cafes are british would you like to see more of them yes more hangings and actually 1974 they did another survey and they found that two out of three people who regretted joining europe they thought it was a terrible idea and the the survey quoted a trade union official from the black country which will enable me to do my black country accent and he said now that we're in the common market we're just like all those other countries who

37:42Tom Holland:are foreigners making decisions for us do you think that's actually i mean are they experiencing that as something that is directly impacting them no or is it just a kind of vague sense of

37:53Dominic Sandbrook:who are foreigners to tell us what to do that's exactly what it is there's nothing there's there's no way in which that trade union official from the black country in which his life has been affected at all by being in the european common market this brings us back to harold wilson and the Labour government. So Wilson, he's not an instinctive European. He always used to say, I've always been a Commonwealth man. And a holiday on the silly house man. When he was in number 10, he said to his aides at one point, I don't want French cheese. I don't like French cheese. I mean, who's ever heard of French cheese?

38:25Dominic Sandbrook:I want proper English cheese. Get rid of all this stuff. The problem for him is that the Labour Party is deeply split. So on the one you have the sort of the progressive do-gooding kind of middle classes.

38:36Tom Holland:Roy Jenkins, who will become the head of the European Commission, loves a bottle of claret, loves a French cheese. So he'd been Home Secretary, hadn't he?

38:45Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. And he's the darling of that wing of the party. He loves Europe. He thinks Europe is the be all and end all. And as you say, he goes off to run the European Commission. And he comes from a Methodist background.

38:57Tom Holland:Mining family in Wales. And he totally rejects it and kind of transforms himself into a kind of claret swilling grandee.

39:04Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, he went to Balliol and they put him through a special sort of chemical process that turned him into Rory Stewart. And that's, you know, he came out the other side. Did you get off at that when you went to Balliol? I did, but I turned it down. The working class activists and the left of the party hate Europe. They think it's terrible. It's a threat to socialism. It's a threat to the honest independence of the British working man. So Michael Foote, who was a great sort of tribune of the left of the Labour Party, told his voters in Ebber Vale in South Wales, it's a rich nations club opposed to the interests of British democracy and the health of our economy.

39:41Tom Holland:So Michael Foote is a romantic about British exceptionalism in exactly the way that he not Powell is on the right. And actually, they're very good friends, aren't they?

39:51Dominic Sandbrook:They bond over this. And in the second half of this episode, I mean, we will discuss how they work together against Europe. anyway so Wilson's party is split and he comes up with a great wheeze to avoid pinning his own colors to the mast and to stop the party splitting he says I'm in favor of Europe in principle but not in practice so basically that's brilliant he says he says uh he says um Ted Heath has got us in on very bad terms so when I come back as prime minister I will renegotiate the terms and then will hold a referendum so that the people can decide. Which is exactly Cameron's strategy in 2016.

40:30Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, renegotiation and referendum. And it worked for Harold Wilson and Cameron thought it would work for him. Now, there's never been at this point a referendum in Britain. And the reason there's never been a referendum is because we don't need one. We have parliament. Referendums are foreign. Parliament is sovereign. Parliament expresses the will of the British people, which you need to ask people for. They've sent their representatives to parliament.

40:51Tom Holland:also totalitarian governments use referendums that was another favorite theme wasn't it yeah

40:56Dominic Sandbrook:that's what margot thatcher said it's the device of dictators actually do you know what there have been a lot of talk of having referendums before in british history nobody ever talks about this but in the edwardian period there have been serious proposals to have referendums about tariff reform about women's suffrage about the deadlock between the lords and the commons churchill wanted to have a referendum in 1945? Winston. Winston, of all people, wanted to have a referendum to keep his own government going at the end of the war with Germany, to keep it going during the war with Japan. And Clement Attlee said no, didn't agree with it.

41:30Dominic Sandbrook:But Harold Wilson is now back as prime minister and the referendum is on. So he goes to the Europeans, he says, I want to renegotiate Britain's terms. Do they understand what he's doing? Do they get the politics of it? I mean, they're pretty annoyed about it they do get the politics of it and they want britain to stay in so they agree to do it but they're not best pleased there's an excellent um cartoon in the french equivalent of private eye the satirical magazine le canard enchaîné and it shows this it's a cartoon it's a very french cartoon it shows this wilson as this sort of ludicrous little figure lying between the legs of a naked woman and the woman was so french so french the The woman wears a crown labelled Europe, and the woman says to him in French, get in or get out, my dear Wilson, but do stop all this ridiculous coming and going.

42:17Dominic Sandbrook:Anyway, they have the renegotiation. Wilson sends his Foreign Secretary James Callaghan, who later complained that he spent most of his time arguing about, and I quote, the fixed position of rearview mirrors on agricultural tractors. That's the British image of the European project.

42:32Tom Holland:Nothing about stopping the rise of fascism.

42:35Dominic Sandbrook:No. So March 75, 17th of March, Wilson goes to see his cabinet and he says, I've got a great deal for Britain, a great new deal. Now, actually, it's basically exactly the same as Ted Heath's deal with a couple of superficial differences. And he also says, thanks to my renegotiation, we have stopped Europe from developing in a federalist direction. And as long as we stay in, we will stop it. I mean, how many times were we to hear that in the next 20 years or whatever? Now, his lefty ministers did not agree. So one of them, Tony Benn, who we talk about after the break, said, this is rubbish. The community will destroy the whole basis on which the Labour movement was founded and our commitment to democratic change.

43:18Dominic Sandbrook:But Wilson is adamant the deal is done. The first referendum in British history is set for Thursday, the 5th of June. Wilson himself will advise the British people to vote yes. but his ministers can campaign on whatever side they like. And the question is very simple. Do you think the United Kingdom should stay in the European community?

43:39Tom Holland:God, unbelievable tension. So how will the British people vote in this referendum? And most crucially of all, can Paul McCartney swing the balance? We'll find out after the break.

43:59Tom Holland:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Rest is History, where it is the late spring of 1975, and the date has been set for Britain's first referendum. And the choice is simple. It's between splendid isolation and continental brotherhood. And you couldn't think of anything really more likely to galvanize people and get them talking with huge excitement about politics in the pubs that they don't want to open all day and in the...

44:29Dominic Sandbrook:Non-existent pavement cafes.

44:30Tom Holland:In the street cafes that they regard as foreign rubbish.

44:34Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, well actually, do you know what? No one cares. I mean, that's the thing with this. So, it's odd to be doing a subject to the rest of the history that nobody cared about. But it's Europe. It's not surprising. So basically, the referendum is on and for weeks, nothing happens at all. There have been two elections in the last year and people are sick about another election. It's the last thing they want. So... It only really gets going with a couple of weeks to go, and the two sides start holding press conferences. And we'll start, you know, since we're a sister podcast of the rest is politics, we'll start where they would want us to start, with the Remainers of the day, with the Yes campaign.

45:10Dominic Sandbrook:So the best known Remainer is Harold Wilson. I mean, he's so unenthusiastic. You know, he's very like Jeremy Corbyn in 2016. His aide, Bernard Donoghue, wrote in his diary, Harold is clearly unhappy about having to come out so firmly in favour of the market. He's really a little Englander, and at heart he agrees with every word that no campaign says. So he fights to the end against actually telling people to vote yes, which is true, he did. He did it very half-heartedly. Now part of the reason for that is his own party is so split. So they're split right down the middle. Seven of his cabinet ministers are leavers, and about half of his MPs, and the unions too are divided about 50-50.

45:48Tom Holland:Oh really, I thought the unions were really against it.

45:50Dominic Sandbrook:No, there are a couple of unions. A lot of the big unions are against it, but there are other unions that are for it. So it's not quite as simple as it's sometimes painted. Now, by contrast, the Tories are much more pro-Remain.

46:05Tom Holland:And the Tories by this point are led by noted Euro enthusiast Margaret Thatcher. And she's all over it, isn't she?

46:11Dominic Sandbrook:so Margaret Thatcher this is the funny thing Thatcher's relationship with Europe is always really ambiguous so her father Alfred Roberts we talked about him in the last episode he once told the Grantham Rotary Club I would sooner be a boot black in England than a leading citizen in a good many of the other leading countries in the world today i.e. the person who polishes your boots and that I think is very much her vibe she thinks being British is to have won first place in the lottery of life Europeans cannot be trusted they're sneaky they don't follow the rules all of this stuff they wear ludicrous uniforms they're always invading poland all of that right exactly however she's also a free trader and she likes open markets and a lot of tories including margaret thatcher see europe as a bulwark against socialism so it's a kind of it's part of the cold war basically the western alliance tom free nations exactly so in 1975 she is all for it she tells a press conference there is no genuine alternative to working closely together and she boasts you know we did this we got britain to europe the conservative party has been pursuing the european vision almost as long as we existed as a party we are inextricably part of europe europe is where we are and where we have always been now at this first press conference there's an excellent moment takes us back to something we discussed last time because she's sitting next to the chairman of the conservative group for europe the great totem of britain in europe ted heath who hates her with a passion and she says to ted heath you can see the clip online it's really funny she says she plays the sort of bashful protege she says um to ted heath she turns to him and she says you have done more than anyone else for the conservative cause in europe and to see that britain's place is in europe naturally it is with some temerity that the pupil speaks before the master because you know more about it than any of the rest of us and the camera at this point the camera sort of moves across ted and he is staring at her with unalloyed hatred that says nothing is she at this point wearing

48:18Tom Holland:her comedy euro jumper no which with all the european flags on it i love this so she doesn't

48:25Dominic Sandbrook:wear it at the press conference but she wears it later at a photo call by churchill's statue and she wears this tremendous jumper so there's nine women in jumpers or t-shirts with european flags on and then there's margaret thatcher in a jumper with all the flags of the european and it's just such a laughable image and presumably whenever a sort of tory you're a skeptic today you know when jacob reese mogg contemplates that image he must be i mean steam must come out of his ears like the circuits must explode or something and in fact the whole yes campaign really the backbone of it was a was the tory party so they provided a lot of the organizational muscle the headquarters of the yes campaign was donated by mrs thatcher's future party treasurer alistair mccalpine it's a big business campaign so they get tons of money from shell ford ibm ici all the biggest firms in the country they have a war chest of one and a half million pounds which is the biggest war chest that any side had ever had in a british electoral campaign and it's 10 times as much as the no campaign had so i mean they are they're able to

49:35Tom Holland:absolutely obliterate the leave campaign it's a left-wing um kind of suspicion of the common market as a capitalist plot i mean there's a kind of element of i mean it's kind of illustrating

49:47Dominic Sandbrook:that well i mean i suppose at some level it is a capitalist plot i mean christian democrats do

49:52Tom Holland:play a big part in setting up the european union no but i mean in that it is the forces of capitalism in britain who are funding this against you could frame it as the you know the yeah the oppressed working masses who don't can't tap all this money i think you could frame it and there'd be an element of truth in it i mean i don't necessarily think that's a bad thing but i think you're dead

50:13Dominic Sandbrook:right big business wants us to join the the european project and wants us to stay in because they want the markets and they want the integration much more so than in 2016 when it was more divided but business is unanimous in the 1970s they've also got celebrities so graham green came out in favor of it alec guinness to obi-wan kenobi peter ustinov hercule poirot and the england football manager don revy soon to be disgraced he came out in favor as well and there's generally a very rest is politicsy vibe to the campaign so it's basically sensible moderate people meeting up yes coming together agree on common sense policies for britain exactly so that's at the top and then the grassroots you basically have a much more it's quite herbivorous it's quite lib dem so there's gin and tonic parties there's basically people get together and compare their lovely beards they meet there's actually some there's actually some places where they genuinely genuinely hold meetings at vegetarian restaurants it's very mid-70s herbivorous behavior let's get to the no campaign the no campaign has a very different vibe it's it's it's these are the people who want to leave and these are some very peculiar combinations so basically i'll give you two examples one is ipswich in ipswich the no campaign was run by an alliance of labor the communists, people on the very right of the Tories, and a married couple who were described as, quote, not quite National Front, but close.

51:44Dominic Sandbrook:So quite like X. Twitter as was. That's that kind of vibe. Yeah. So Burnley, where Tony Pastor, our gold-hunger boss, comes from, the No campaign was run by an anarchist, a communist, some Labour Party activists, and a very lone and friendless Tory. And they didn't get on very well. And as one of them said afterwards, our campaign was a shambles from beginning to end. That's Burnley for you. The one thing the No Campaign have is the support of one of your favourite people, Tom. So Paul McCartney. I mean, I think probably my favourite person. He's virtually the only celebrity who says he wants to leave in 1975.

52:22Dominic Sandbrook:And his rationale, he says, Europe is very much like the Beatles. Now the partnership has been dissolved, I'm much better off.

52:29Tom Holland:He didn't really mean it, though.

52:31Dominic Sandbrook:Do you not think he meant it?

52:32Tom Holland:No, he didn't mean it. About the Beatles or about Europe? both i think because he didn't vote in the brexit referendum in 2016 yeah and then he ended up saying actually i think brexit's a bad idea ringo was ringo ringo was all in favor of brexit paul i feel

52:45Dominic Sandbrook:like if you shouted your mouth off in 75 you should at least turn up in 2016 no it couldn't make his mind up okay fair enough the big problem the no campaign have is they have absolutely no money the yes campaign i described them as having one and a half million pounds the no campaign of 133 thousand pounds and unbelievably all but nine thousand pounds this came from the government so basically they only raised nine thousand pounds and as one account of the campaign puts it it was a race between a formula one car and a bicycle and the other big problem they have is the people who are their spokesmen are very very unpopular yes so who've they got dominic they've got enoch powell who some people may remember from last time they have the radical pamphleteer Michael Foot so we'll be having a bit more of him on the show in the next week very long hair yeah long white hair

53:33Tom Holland:thick glasses loves Jonathan Swift and Byron

53:37Dominic Sandbrook:Byron and the romantics and Hazlitt and all this stuff but he looks about 6 ,000 years old doesn't he he looks like Wurzel Gummidge the Scarecrow right and then Tony Benn and we'll come to Tony Benn in just a second he's the main spokesman really and a cartoon in the Evening Standard had a Get Britain Out march it showed a great Leavers march led by all these three people. And they were surrounded by banners reading Trotskyist, National Front, Orange Order, Communist Party, IRA. And that sort of summed up the public perception.

54:08Tom Holland:That they were fruitcakes and lunatics or whatever Cameron said about Brexit.

54:13Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. And this brings us to their chief spokesman, who is Tony Benn. Now, Tony Benn in the 1970s, I mean, he's also been in Love Island, hasn't he? Didn't he come on Love Island?

54:23Tom Holland:He has appeared on The Rest of History a few times. And he won. Yeah, he did. The salient thing for people to remember about Tony Benn is that he gets stung on the penis by a wasp.

54:34Dominic Sandbrook:When I was doing the notes, I didn't bother writing it down because I knew you would mention it.

54:38Tom Holland:Because that's the single most important thing about him. And he puts it in his diaries. Or stung on the penis by a wasp, as he would actually have put it.

54:46Dominic Sandbrook:for our non-British listeners, it's going to be hard to express how well known and how controversial his political persona was in the 70s and 80s. In all the history of the Labour Party, I think he stands as the politician dearest to the hearts of kind of left-wing party activists. And in his pomp in the 1970s, people had no doubt whatsoever that he was the future of British politics. He was an absolutely defining political figure. He's 50 years old, so same age as Margaret Thatcher. He comes from a long line of progressive politicians. His father, Viscount Stansgate, had defected from the Liberals to Labour in the 1920s.

55:33Tom Holland:And he has to kind of turn down his own peerage, doesn't he?

55:37Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, renounce his own peerage to carry on as an MP, Ben does. And he started out working for Howard Wilson as a technocratic minister of technology. among other things. But after they were turfed out in 1970, he had this, I think, a genuinely, I mean, evangelical is the word. He has this kind of evangelical conversion. He's from a long line of Methodists and whatnot. And it's as though he has been born again. That's the only way to describe the intensity of it. He becomes an enthusiast for absolutely every conceivable left-wing cause, particularly things like workers' control and industrial democracy.

56:15Dominic Sandbrook:He wants to have, for example, to set up a rival, what he calls a working class power structure run by the trade unions that would govern the country alongside parliament. He wants to ditch nuclear weapons and pull out of NATO. He's fervently anti-European. He sees Europe as a capitalist cartel, and it will make it impossible to build socialism in one country. and the funny thing about writing about tony ben i love writing about him i've written about him a lot in my books it's the paradox that his colleagues universally said he's an extremely nice man he's very courteous he's kind he's polite he's charming and then they would say in the next breath i hate him he's he's uh they because they would say he is disloyal he's narcissistic he's unctuous, he's hypocritical, he's self-serving, you cannot trust him, all of this kind of stuff.

57:11Dominic Sandbrook:And those two things which seem so contradictory, lots of people that he worked with held both those ideas in their heads at once. By the time Labour got back in 1974, he'd become a complete bogeyman to the British press. The cartoonists commonly drew him either wearing a Nazi uniform or a communist uniform because they regarded him as a kind of totalitarian and waiting. Wilson doesn't really trust him, but because Wilson has no majority and he cannot afford to alienate the left, he has made Ben his industry secretary. And since coming back to power, Ben has been working on this extraordinary program of socialist transformation.

57:50Dominic Sandbrook:He wants to force all major companies in Britain to sign planning agreements with the state, and he wants to set up a national enterprise board to take over companies in the public interest. In fact, Ben wanted to use the Emergency Powers Act to take over the 25 biggest companies in Britain straight away and build a new economy on the principle of workers' control. This provoked great horror in the city, and eventually Jim Callaghan and Dennis Healy went to see Harold Wilson and said, you've got to reign this bloke in, he's out of control. His plans were emasculating, he had to console himself by investing public money in three workers' cooperatives.

58:26Dominic Sandbrook:So one of of them was a newspaper in scotland called the scottish daily news that went bust after six months one of them was a motorbike cooperative in birmingham that managed to struggle on for eight years but my favorite by far is this former washing machine factory in merseyside which had been occupied by its own workers when it went bust ben wanted to give them four million pounds of public money and his own consultants working for the department of industry told him this was absolutely insane don't do it and when he brought it up in cabinet i mean he describes in his diary some of the other ministers literally laugh in his face when he tells them his plan

59:06Tom Holland:i mean that's what's wonderful about his diaries isn't it it's the kind of there's a pooterish yeah quality dennis laughed in my face again

59:17Dominic Sandbrook:completely kind of innocence almost it's a diary it's that rare thing of a diary written by a really unreliable narrator you know a narrator who's telling you but one side of the story but you can completely see the reality of what's happening which is he's gone to the cabinet he said i've got an extra plan for rest all this money and they say to him well what would the factory make he says it would make car radiators and orange juice a great pairing to quote myself in uh seasons in the sun history offers few examples of successful factories making both car parts and orange shoes imagine this one in cuba there must be some reason maybe there's some crossover in the equipment if we have any any listeners who are industrialists let us know the bonkers thing about this wilson decided said i'll give them the money and they did give them the money.

1:00:13Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, anything for a quiet life. How did it work? They went bust in 1978. It was not a success. I mean, I would not buy my orange juice from a factory that I knew, a publicly funded factory that was also making car radiators. I would raise an eyebrow to say that. Anyway, all this means that by the time of the referendum, Ben is an incredibly controversial figure. He's probably the most abused minister in modern political history. He's making the headlines day after day, and I'll just give you two examples to give you a sense. one of them is so 70s the sunday times ran a huge cartoon of him listeners to steal themselves showing him as a rapist dragging off a screaming woman who represents british industry and ben is saying good heavens everyone knows that when a woman says no she really means yes that is very 70s that's number one and number two editorial in the times i mean one of the most surely one of the most damning editorials ever published in the times about a single politician ben is a dangerous politician who stirs up and exploits political forces that will first bring Britain to economic ruin and then use the rubble as the foundations for a collectivist regime.

1:01:19Dominic Sandbrook:And basically they're saying he's Alexander Kerensky or somebody. He gets death threats in the campaign, but he's undeterred. He tours the land, giving endless speeches about the threat of Europe. The more he speaks, the more support for his cause falls. He basically puts people off, but that never stops him because he's an evangelist he's preaching the gospel i mean he he does have this his famous

1:01:44Tom Holland:five questions isn't it you know what what what power have you got and yeah where did you get it from and how can i get rid of you and i can't remember what the other ones are but i mean there is something quite powerful about that he's a good brilliant speaker i mean he's a brilliant speaker and that that you know and he says that that if you can't remove somebody who has control over your life then you don't live in a democracy it's not a bad point and that is probably the single most powerful argument that could be made against the common market i urge listeners you can go onto

1:02:15Dominic Sandbrook:youtube you can find loads and loads of his speeches or indeed michael foots or enot powers or whatever about europe i mean the three of them one thing they have in common whatever you think of their their politics they're brilliant speakers and tony ben i've written about him a lot i find think he's deluded but i think he's he's clever he's he's a wonderfully fluent amusing sort of dazzlingly good speaker actually so that you will have watched all the debates i guess that went on

1:02:45Tom Holland:for this referendum and you will have watched lots that went on in 2016 yeah how does the standard of

1:02:51Dominic Sandbrook:the debate compare there is there is no comparison whatsoever the standard in 1975 to say that it's above that of 2016 is to massively undersell it i mean the the level if you there's a there's brilliant debate for example between roy jenkins and tony ben that you can see online i think it and there's also roy jenkins and enol powell and the standard of kind of intellectual engagement of understanding of the issues what they expect of the audience so what's changed what changed the media ecosystem changes it's the media do you think all the politicians or what both i think they both change simultaneously.

1:03:29Dominic Sandbrook:I think the people going into politics aren't as good, and the media demands different things, which makes it impossible for them to communicate at the same length or with the same depth or complexity. And frankly, we've changed probably as consumers. Our attention spans are shorter. We don't want to listen to Roy Jenkins speak for 10 minutes on the principle of subsidiarity, or Enoch Powell speaking for 10 minutes about what sovereignty really means. I mean, most people would be bored and would switch off. And that's probably one of the things that's changed. What do the great British people think?

1:03:59Dominic Sandbrook:They don't care. Simple as that. Polls show Europe doesn't matter to people. They are told again and again by all of these people, especially in the No campaign, Europe is a deadly threat to British sovereignty. So Labour's cabinet minister, Peter Shaw, he said, if we vote yes and we stay in Europe, in the European community, it will mean the long and famous story of the British nation and people has ended, that we're now so weak and powerless that we must accept terms and conditions, penalties and limitations as though we'd suffered defeat in war and people just uh they don't want to know they don't really want to listen and the paradox of this and i think this is the really interesting thing the paradox of this is that all the evidence shows that the british people in the 70s were pretty eurosceptic so remember that before we entered the polls and surveys showed that people were generally against it or indifferent and after the referendum polls showed the same thing so in 1978 48 said being in europe was bad for britain only 25 good in 1980 so after margaret thatcher's become prime minister 60 said they would vote to leave if they were given the chance so what's different in in um 1975 i think part of it is the campaign itself so every newspaper pretty much is overwhelmingly pro-european you know the daily mail does a big sort of sandbrook crystal ball style piece saying this is what would happen if we left there would be no coffee no wine no beans or bananas no oranges yeah siege siege britain isn't it siege britain exactly yeah the big thing however is the economic context this is precisely the point when inflation is ripping through the british economy you know wages are rising at 30 percent a year there are all these apocalyptic predictions we're heading into you know we're turning into weimar germany we're heading for dictatorship and most people think well against this backdrop getting out of you i mean i don't think they'd have got in in 1975 i think they'd have been more hesitant they'd have stuck to the status quo but at this point europe is the status

1:06:03Tom Holland:quo and they don't want to rock the boat so always keep a hold of nurse for fear of something worse

1:06:07Dominic Sandbrook:so we get towards the election day actually you're asking about the standard of the debate I mean the very last action of the campaign I mean this tells you so much about the difference is a two-hour debate at the Oxford Union which was shown live on the BBC and it had Ted Heath and Jeremy Thorpe in dinner jackets against Barbara Castle and Peter Shaw and you can watch a lot of clips of that on YouTube again and the contrast with 2016 is just so embarrassing and depressing because it's so much better Anyway, Thursday the 5th of June, the people vote. And everyone knows the Yes campaign are going to win.

1:06:44Dominic Sandbrook:Wilson votes yes. His wife, Mary, votes no. His controller, Marcia, she also votes no, interestingly. The turnout is about 65%. The results come through the next day. And 67 % have voted to stay in. They voted yes. So two-thirds majority. Interestingly, the most pro-European places in Britain are the richest and the most conservative. So Buckinghamshire, Surrey and West Sussex. And guess what the least European parts of the country are? Scotland. Scotland. They don't like Europe in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. So interesting and such a contrast with 2016. Also a contrast with 2016, the press are delighted that we've stayed in.

1:07:30Dominic Sandbrook:So the Daily Mail, the most crushing victory in British political history. the effect of this thunderous yes will echo down the years very ironic they were to change their tune the great hero of the yes campaign is ted heath the times called in the achilles of the european cause margaret thatcher paid a handsome tribute to him in the commons she said he deserves the campaign honors how did ted heath react gracelessly i'll grow from the times head in hand stony faced he made no acknowledgements oh he's brilliant tony ben took it really graciously i have to say um this is a again a big difference of 2016 tells you again how politics has changed there were no calls for a second referendum there were no allegations of you know skullduggery or anything like this tony ben said i've just been in receipt of a very big message from the british people and i read it loud and clear i mean whatever you say about tony ben he's a massive

1:08:28Tom Holland:democrat the principle of democracy is fundamental to him completely it is but it's a disaster for

1:08:34Dominic Sandbrook:him because he's been humiliated and a couple of days later harold wilson is able to emasculate him completely take him away from the department of industry and move him to the backwater of energy and ben absolutely loses it with wilson he describes in his diaries what you're doing is capitulating to the cbi that's the business group to the tory press and to the tories do you think is going to save you've made a great mistake they'll be pleased for 24 hours then they'll turn on you the thing with ben is whenever you slap him down he will never walk away he'll always stay in the cabinet at all costs he'll take basically whatever he's given which he does so at least one big issue has been resolved or so it seems because of course europe was not quite resolved but the bigger issue is that britain is still sliding towards economic disaster there's a brilliant cartoon a couple of days after the result in the sun and it shows harold wilson and his ministers as animal tamers at a circus and they're waving their whips at a little mouse that is labeled referendum sideshow and behind them is rearing this tiger teeth bared fangs bared labeled economic crisis and the circus manager very nervously is saying to them right lads now you've finished playing with the mouse now you can see why inflation is almost 30 percent and just a few days after the referendum the pound begins to slide and it goes down down down day after day the pressure mounting on harold wilson all the time and six weeks after the referendum he tells his press chief joe haynes that he has come to a dramatic decision a bombshell that will transform British politics.

1:10:17Dominic Sandbrook:But what that bombshell is, we will find out next time.

1:10:21Tom Holland:And if you are a member of the Rest is History Club, then of course you can hear that right now. Find out what that bombshell decision is. And if you would like to join them, then therestishistory.com awaits you. But in the meanwhile, thank you, Dominic. Thrilling stuff. We will see you next time. Bye-bye.

1:10:43Dominic Sandbrook:Bye-bye.

1:10:51Dominic Sandbrook:hi everybody it's dominic here so we are in week three as our rest is history club members will surely know of our mighty series about photography and history with special guest chris floyd one of britain's leading photographers and the last two exclusive episodes we looked at revolutions and we looked at music but in this week's episode we're on to something a little bit more enticing we are looking at the story of fashion but as i say this is exclusively for rest is history members however we have a little snippet of it for you right here these glen lutchford pictures are for prada is that right and what immediately strikes me about them and to describe them for people who are only listening they are very cinematic they feel

1:11:38Tom Holland:deliberately old-fashioned so they're in a boat a rowing boat it looks like it's on the river tiber they had the river shut down for the shoot well it was for the autumn winter 97 prada campaign said they had the money to pay the city of rome close off the river you've got in the background people setting fire to what i think are bales of hay to create smoke and stuff he said in his email to me an extra note as i know dominic has a special place in his heart for the us in 1968 When I was growing up, we didn't have any art books, but my dad bring one Time Life book home, which I studied in great detail.

1:12:15Tom Holland:Specifically, one picture by Time Life photographer Bill Eppridge. His picture of Bobby Kennedy dying on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen. Looking back, it had a film noir quality, which I found alluring. The man in the picture unknown to nine-year-old me. The contradiction between Bobby's movie star looks in his black suit, yet stricken and obviously in great danger. I'm not sure why it stayed with me, but when I became a photographer, I began to unconsciously replicate it. My Prada pictures were definitely inspired by it. Years later, Bill Etpridge became my neighbor in Connecticut and would come to lunch on occasion and we would talk in great detail about this day.

1:12:52Tom Holland:Bill told him that he and Bobby became good friends on the campaign trail and he shared many anecdotes from that period. And he said one thing was that during Bobby, when he was making his speech. Yeah, at the Ambassador Hotel in LA. Yeah, one of his aides whispered to Bill Eppridge, he's going to go out the front door, go and wait for him by the front door. And then at some point later, someone went to Kennedy and said, actually, there's some donors in the kitchen that want to meet you. We've got to go out the back door and meet the donors on the way out. And that's when he was shot in the kitchen.

1:13:21Tom Holland:Bill then goes storming back through the hotel. And it's Bill Eppridge that took that picture. And he said that although they had become great friends on the campaign, ethel kennedy never forgave him for taking pictures instead of helping and she never spoke to him

1:13:35Dominic Sandbrook:again but that's the issue that photographers always confront isn't it you're just a bystander chronicling or are you going to intervene yeah and by and large photographers don't intervene do

1:13:43Tom Holland:they no so out of that comes this beautiful fashion fashion imagery which which i would never have put the two and two together uh if he hadn't told me that right well it's a reminder of how interlinked all these things are i suppose so thank you for listening to that little extract

1:14:00Dominic Sandbrook:Now, if you enjoyed what you heard and you want to hear more, you can, of course, subscribe by going to the rest is history dot com and you sign up and you get a host of unbelievable benefits as well. So on that bombshell, thank you very much for listening and goodbye.

1:14:17Tom Holland:It is out of control in the White House right now. Welcome to The Rest is Politics US. I'm Katty Kay. I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Who is the worst politician in Washington right now? They don't know how to manage Donald Trump.

1:14:33Dominic Sandbrook:I talked to the people that organized the abduction. I'm telling you why they did it.

1:14:37Tom Holland:The White House isn't a bind, Anthony.

1:14:39Dominic Sandbrook:Here's what I would say to you about FAFA.

1:14:41Tom Holland:The chaos is the strategy. It should not have happened, and it is a violation of international law. Is he losing control of the party? I survived 11 days in Trump's White House. I know the SOB. I've been covering politics in Washington for almost 30 years. Twice a week, we break down what's really going on in Trump's White House. The big issue for the United States is going to be we were once seen as a benevolent superpower, and now we're seen as an aggressor. You know, he can lie about a lot of things, but he can't lie about what people are feeling about the economy. If you really want to understand what's going on in Trump's mind, just search The Rest is Politics US wherever you get your podcasts.