A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment by John Preston

Author:John Preston [Preston, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241973752
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

22

Things Fall Apart

When Bessell returned to England at the start of December 1973, he had been so preoccupied with his problems that he hadn’t paid much attention to his surroundings. But even he couldn’t help noticing that something very strange had happened in his absence. Hiring a car, he was told that he might have problems filling it up, as petrol supplies were running low. All over the country there were regular power cuts, because power stations were also short of fuel. Many factories had closed. Bessell arrived for one meeting in Mayfair to find the building in darkness. A secretary holding a torch led him through to a candlelit boardroom. It was like walking into a scene from a seventeenth-century Dutch painting.

For months the Prime Minister, Ted Heath, and the miners had been at loggerheads over the miners’ demands for a pay rise in excess of 15 per cent. When the demand was turned down, the National Union of Mineworkers called a series of lightning strikes. At the same time, oil prices had shot up after the Arab-dominated Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an oil embargo in protest at American involvement in the Yom Kippur War. By mid December the Central Electricity Generating Board warned that there were no longer enough fuel supplies left to last the winter. Floodlit football games were outlawed and television broadcasts turned off at half ten on weekdays. The country was shuddering to a halt.

In a desperate attempt to conserve fuel, Heath announced that from the beginning of January 1974 the working week would be cut from five days to three. But his hopes that public outrage might force the miners back to work proved unfounded. On 4 February, they voted for an all-out strike to start the following Sunday. Faced with such a blatant threat to his authority, Heath called a General Election, to be held on 28 February.

No other General Election of modern times has taken place against such a dramatic backdrop. Inflation was running at 17 per cent, while unemployment was at its highest level since the 1930s. But people weren’t just frightened about losing their jobs; they were also frightened about losing their lives. The year before, the Provisional IRA had extended its bombing campaign to the British mainland. On the same day as the miners voted to strike, eleven people were killed when a bomb exploded on an army coach carrying soldiers and their families down the M62 near Leeds.

Thorpe was convinced that all this uncertainty would play in his favour. In an all-out bid to build on their by-elections gains, the Liberals decided to field more candidates than ever before – 517. When the election was announced, the Conservatives had a lead of around 7 per cent. But, as the campaign went on, the gap started to narrow. The closer the two main parties were, the greater the likelihood that the Liberals could storm through the middle and end up holding the balance of power.

This time,

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